Domesticating the Foreign: Globalization's Effects on the Place/s of Languages

Abstract

Foreign language education is deeply affected by globalization, destabilizing some of the central ideas that have helped form national languages, and, by contrast, foreign languages. This article traces the economic origins of contemporary globalization and the deep communication effects that arise. Migration of peoples, instantaneous communication technologies, and new modes of imagining relationships in the context of vast flows of population, ideas, goods, and communication mean that teachers of different languages need to make multilingual and multicultural realities, rather than national and foreign ones, central notions in curriculum, teaching, and language choice. Professional dialogue between teachers of English, traditional foreign languages, heritage/community languages, and other categories of language interest are required to foster a new overall understanding of the enterprise of language education, suited to the altered world context of contemporary globalization.

Motivational Strategies and the Reframing of English: Activity Design and Challenges for Teachers in Contexts of Extensive Extramural Encounters

“…In motivation research the changed role of English as a world auxiliary language (Lo Bianco, ) that is indispensable in cross‐cultural communication (Clyne & Sharifian, ) has been evident for some time (Ushioda & Dörnyei, ). A decade ago, in their large‐scale longitudinal study of Hungarian students’ motivation, Dörnyei, Csizér, and Németh () first identified the effects of this shifting status.…”

Evolución científica de la enseñanza de lenguas en el contexto universitario (1900-2019)

“…En China se estudia las prácticas lingüísticas de los académicos multilingües en las publicaciones académicas, a la vez que el gobierno amplía la educación multilingüe en la enseñanza superior (ZHENG; GUO, 2019). Sin embargo, al contrario, ocurre en Inglaterra, donde los estudios se centran, entre otros aspectos, en el deficiente historial británico para el aprendizaje de idiomas por el inglés global, ya que las razones utilitarias para aprender idiomas distintos al inglés se ven minadas (LANVERS, 2017;LO BIANCO, 2014).…”

The Foreign Language Classroom: Current Perspectives and Future Considerations

“…Furthermore, in some Member States, English has acquired the status of ‘basic skill’; that is, an academic subject to be mastered to high levels of proficiency, with many more hours devoted to its learning than to other FLs (European Commission, ). This attribution to English of the status of additional rather than foreign language is increasingly common in other parts of the world (Lo Bianco, ; see also Graddol, ). As a result, proficiency in the new lingua franca rather than multilingualism has become an essential commodity in the global marketplace (Dewaele, ).…”

“…We acknowledge that the distinctions between ‘second’ and ‘foreign’ are increasingly blurred (Kramsch, ; Spolsky, ), notably in the case of a lingua franca language such as English (Cogo, ; Kachru, ; Nayar, ; Swan, ; see also Widdowson, ) or in the case of a commodified language, such as Russian has become in Europe (Pavlenko, ) . We also acknowledge the changes brought about by globalization and population mobility to the concept of ‘foreign’ itself when real‐time instantaneous communication has altered the significance of geographical distribution of languages and their availability (Lo Bianco, ). However, the terms are used by the MLJ in the description of its editorial mission, and they also figure as keywords for articles published in the journal.…”

“…Lo Bianco () contrasts the mostly low utilitarian demand for FLs in English‐speaking countries (with the exception of Spanish in the United States) with the hyperutilitarian demand for English in non‐English‐speaking countries. In fact, English is becoming ‘the additional language’ by far, even in settings with language policies that actively promote multilingualism, such as the European Union.…”