by Beatriz López Medina (blopezm@nebrija.es)
ICMME 2017
International Conference on Multilingualism and Multilingual Education
The conference considers all aspects of the linguistic and sociolinguistic competences and practices of bi-/multilingual speakers who cross existing social and linguistic boundaries, adopting or adapting themselves to new and overlapping linguistic spaces.
ABSTRACT:
Within the framework of the Erasmus+ Project 2016‐1‐ES01‐KA201‐025491, and in the scope of two years -2016-2018-, primary students from Riga (Latvia), Altamura (Italy), Exeter (UK) and Lorca (Spain) experience mobility in order to improve their linguistic and cultural competence. The present study analyses students’ written productions at the end of their first visit of the program (Lorca), where the children involved in the mobility reflect upon their perceptions of other students’ cultures. For a whole week, foreign students hosted by Spanish families, and the Spanish children involved in the project (second cycle primary in all cases) participate in academic, cultural and ludic activities. The lexical analysis of their written productions in L1 collected at the end of the week and after taking part in the different activities reflect a development of cultural awareness towards foreign cultures and countries. Considering lexis is at a crossroads between language and culture, this study analyses the lexical choices made by the groups of British and Spanish children (n=36) when writing about their impressions on the other cultures after finishing the first intercultural exchange with students from the four nationalities; as Ceruti and Lopriore observe (2012, 243) “in spite of the widespread implementation of the lexical approach in foreign language teaching, very few studies have been specifically devoted to the link between lexical development and cross-cultural awareness”. Lexical items have been codified in order to identify the main semantic fields of the compositions and the influence of the context (Byram, 1988). Likewise, the connection between the children’s perception of other cultures and their psychological development (stages) is analysed (Rogers, 1978; Klippel, 1994). Further research is in process to analyse their perceptions as long as the project is carried out and upon the completion of it. The final aim is to determine to what extent the students’ cultural awareness has evolved and developed throughout the project.
Works cited:
Byram, M. (1988). Foreign language education and cultural studies. Language, Culture, and Curriculum, 1, (1), 15-31.
Ceruti, M. A. and Lopriore, L. (2012). Lexicon and Intercultural Competence in EFL manuals, in R. Facchineti, A Cultural Journey through the English Lexicon. Newcastle, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 235-264.
Klippel, F. (1994). Cultural aspects in foreign language teaching. Journal for the Study of British Cultures, 1(1), 49-61.
Rogers, Colin (1978), The Child's Perception of Other People, in H. McGurk, ed., Issues in Childhood Social Development, London: Methuen, 107-129.
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