Counteracting the barriers to communicating in English: preventing stereotypes and negative attitudes towards the English language and culture

Abstract

What kind of society will our children live in tomorrow? The question, reiterated by the General Director for Democracy from the Council of Europe, Samardžić-Marković (2018), is a key question, certainly present within parents and educators ’minds.
The question, reiterated by the Director General for Democracy of the Council of Europe, Samardžić-Marković (2018), is a key issue, certainly present in t he minds of parents and educators. Education plays an essential role in building the future and reflects the type of world for which we want to prepare future generations. Most importantly, the principle of democracy in education is a fundamental value for all societies. This assumes special emphasis due to the phenomenon of globalization, which triggered the democratization of the teaching of the English language at increasingly elementary levels of education across Europe (Nikolo & Djigunovic, 2011). This Council of Europe directive took place in Portugal through the “Generalization Programme for the Teaching of English in the 1st Cycle of Basic Education”, through the Dispatch no 14 753/2005.
Although other languages became increasingly important in recent decades and the hegemony of the English language is in under debate (Crystal, 2003; Mar-Molinero, 2004; Macedo & Gounari, 2006; Phillipson, 2013), English is still the academic language per excellence (Foyewa, 2015; Rao, 2018).
However, according to the Council of Europe guidelines, promoting intercultural competence as a key competence in the curriculum is of the utmost importance.
Nonetheless, a problem arising from Teaching English to Young Learners in the primary school is the undervalued dimension of the cultural dimension when planning the curriculum, which allows the dissemination of negative attitudes and stereotypes regarding the target language and culture.
The present study is set out to determine to what extent English language teaching materials demonstrate the features of the ‘Other’, who speaks English, how children are accessing the target world, as well as ascertain which pedagogical strategies are most suitable to provide young English language learners with the necessary means to access the target world?
Thus, the present study aims to investigate the most appropriate ways to develop innovative integrated pedagogical approaches (Lasagabaster, 2009; Coyle, 2015; Coyle, 2018), to enhance intercultural awareness and preventing stereotypes.
This pedagogical approach for teaching English to Young Learners was designed taking into account the CLIL (‘Content for Language and Integrated Learning’) approach and the ‘4 Cs: Content, Communication, Cognition and Culture’ (Coyle, 2005; Coyle, 2017) to bring together theories of language learning and intercultural understanding.