Studying and learning foreign languages

Studying and learning foreign languages

There has been in the teaching and learning of ‘modern’ foreign languages a tension
between learning/acquisition for communication purposes and the study of languages. this
applies to language itself, and as such is well known, but it also applies to the learning and
study of cultures. the tension is felt above all in the classroom of institutions offering general
education, and can be seen as part of the bigger question of the relationship of ‘education’ with
‘the real world’. on the one hand, there is a demand that education should ‘prepare for the
real world’; in language and culture education this means the world of communication with
people of other languages and cultures. on the other hand, there is a belief that education
is a world in itself, that it has its own demands and purposes which are equally important; in
language and culture education this means the study of language and languages as a human
phenomenon – and similarly of culture and cultures. the study of language and languages
has a stronger pedigree than the study of culture and cultures because linguistics as a
discipline and the study of grammar in particular has a long history, whereas anthropology as
a discipline and the study of the ‘grammar’ of everyday living is much more recent and has not
been part of the training of language specialists. the pendulum swings back and forth between
‘study’ and ‘learning/acquisition’ and the latter has become dominant not least because of
the evident opportunities for communication in ‘the real world’ arising from mass mobility of
different kinds, ranging from tourism to economic migration – both of managerial elites in the world
of commerce and of workers and an underclass in industries and services. every policy statement
about language education, whether international or in national curricula, or even
 in the explanations schools and universities give to students and their parents, now refers
to the importance of ‘communication’ and ‘communicative competence’. this has been
the case since the 1970s when the notion of communicative competence was taken over from
the analysis of first languages and first language acquisition by those teaching second or foreign
languages. It was assumed that to be proficient in communication it was not only necessary
to have grammatical competence but other competences too and that the ideal was for the learners to strive after the competences which linguistics and sociolinguistics were discovering (idealised) native speakers have. the fact that linguistics and sociolinguistics tended to assume that people speak one language, thus ignoring the majority in the world who speak two or more, was a strange oversight among those interested in teaching languages since they might have been expected to notice that multilingualism is far more common than monolingualism. the list of skills and knowledge underpinning the competence of the native speaker included ‘socio-cultural competence’ 
i.e. the knowledge of a way of life in a society which individuals speaking the language of
that society draw upon in interacting with other members of the society – their knowledge of
the ‘culture’ of that society, its shared values, beliefs and behaviours. and again there was an
often unspoken assumption that learners should try to acquire the same competence as native
speakers. thus socio-cultural competence was added to the concept of communication and
communicative competence even though there was less understanding of how it should be
taught and learnt.