Cultural and linguistic diversity in language teaching and learning: perceptions, policy and practice
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Languages are as diverse as the people who use them. The Common European Framework for Languages recognises and promotes this (at least partially) under “Sociolinguistic competence”. However, the rich sociolinguistic complexity of languages within their cultural contexts is not always given much attention in concrete language teaching policy and pedagogy, which tend to be oriented towards selected standardised language forms.
Using the teaching of German in UK secondary and higher education as a case study, I will discuss three observations in this seminar (cf. Stollhans 2020):
- Curricula, textbooks, assessments and classroom practices draw primarily on a politically and historically dominant standard variety of a language.
- There is a focus on ‘conceptually’ written registers and less attention is given to spoken, or digital, language varieties as well as language change.
- Teacher and learner attitudes towards sociolinguistic variation vary widely on a spectrum between two extremes: the desire to sound ‘authentic’ and L1-like on the one end, and the pressure to adhere to normative rules on the other end. This tension also contributes to an ideologically problematic and pedagogically unhelpful dichotomy between L1 and learner varieties.
These issues, which are often shaped and reinforced by both external policy (e.g. national curricula and assessments, teacher training provision) and internal institutional policy (e.g. local curricula and teaching materials, marking criteria), not only eschew the sociolinguistic and cultural reality of languages (cf. Eberharter & Stollhans 2025), but they also point to a wider problem: the lack of linguistics in language teaching and learning (cf. Havinga et al. 2024; Sheehan et al. 2021, 2024).
In this context, I will introduce the Linguistics in Modern Foreign Languages project, a collaboration between academic linguists and experienced teachers seeking to explore the potential of, and make the case for, linguistics-informed approaches to school-based language teaching.
Teams link: AL lunchtime seminar: Professor Sascha Stollhans | Join meeting in Teams | Microsoft Teams
Bio
Sascha Stollhans (he/him) is Professor of Language Education and Linguistics as well as Pro-Dean for Student Education in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures at the University of Leeds. His research explores the interplay between linguistics and language education, in particular the representation and role of sociolinguistic variation in language teaching and learning. Sascha is Co-President of the Forum for Germanic Language Studies and he co-leads the German strand of the Linguistics in Modern Foreign Languages project, a research collaboration between academic linguists and teachers exploring how linguistics-informed approach could enrich school-based language learning.