1. Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC)
Helmut Johannes Vollmer
University of Osnabrück, Germany
Strasbourg, October 16-18, 2006

2. Language Education in School
Language(s) as School Subjects - National/Official Language of Country: LS - Foreign Language Education - Second/Heritage Language Education
Language(s) as a Medium of Teaching and Learning Across the Curriculum (LAC) - Subject-specific language use/discourse comp. - Bilingual Education/Content and Language Inte-grated Learning (CLIL): a special case of LAC

3. Languages Across the Curriculum
Extending skills and competences from LS (basis)
Specifically new language requirements 1. Acquiring/Using Subject-specific terminology 2. Learning new ways of looking at the world, of thinking and of communicating about it 3. Observing specific thematic patterns, rhetorical structures+comm.conventions of discourse commun.
Widening the concept of communication into the whole range of semiotics

4. Modes of communication
Listening: comprehending oral input/intake
Speaking: constructing meaningful utterances
Reading: understanding written texts
Writing: producing written texts/discourse
Viewing: attending to non-verbal signs/ information
Shaping: using graphical/visual means of expression
Watching: attending to movements/bodily developm.
Moving: using the whole body/person/multi-medial expression

5. Content, Language and Thinking
Language is a tool for content , for conceptualizing, for constructing and linking subject-specific information
Language is linked to the thinking process/is used in it
Language supports or even carries mental activities and precision in cognition; it is self-reflexive
Language helps to bridge between tasks, their internal processing and the explicit formulation of solutions
Language materializes in different discourse functions like naming, defining, describing, explaining, evaluating

6. A Model of Subject-Specific Competence
Procedural Competence
Content Knowledge
Discourse Competence
Discourse Competence

7. Components of Subject-Specific Discourse Competence
Comprehending, identifying, selecting and/or integrating new information/Restructuring inform.
Expressing reconstructed knowledge as well as new insights / linking them into (existing) networks
Constructing and communicating cohesive and coherent pieces of information (Texts/Graphs)
Negotiating perceptions/insights/meanings/positions with others (=subject-specific interaction)

8. Linguistic Indicators of Subject-Specific Discourse Competence
Expressing subject-specific concepts in the right terminology (register: single+ multi-word expr.)
Using a rational, formal, explicit academic or pre-scientific style of expression
Logic+Structuring of whole utterances/texts
Communicating the right discourse functions
Giving reasons or evidence/supporting one‘s findings or views/using argumentative structures

9. Cognitive-Academic Language Proficiency (CALP)
Language of school /acedemic subjects/ of science
requires the performance of other speech acts and discourse functions than in BICS (personal topics)
requires the transition from everyday language use to academic or pre-scientific language use
leads to the development of academic literacy = being able to use language for content purposes (TRANSFERABLE between subjects)

10. Example from Chemistry: Developing the notion of Reaction
Starting with everyday concepts/understandings
Setting up experimental conditions for own observations and recordings
Summarising+interpreting the data,
Formulating possible rules or regularities
Developing, testing + negotiating own hypotheses
Defining REACTION in subject-specific terms

11. Example from Mathematics
Developing the concept of numbers as representing aspects of observed reality
Ordinal numbers (1, 2, 3,......n)
Cardinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, last)
Relating numbers to other (observable) features like colour, shape, function, gender, money)
Experiencing numbers as a secondary system or tool for communication (NUMERACY)

12. Example from Geography: Chinese Agriculture-a success story?
Time line / Duration
Definitions: ...is/means/can be defined as ...
Modality: Permission versus Obligation
Contrast: Winners - Loosers
Realistic Conditions: focus on if-clauses (type 1)
Causal chains:conjunct.+sentence linking adverbs
Giving reasons and explanations

13. Obstacles to be overcome
(1) Lack of a precise understanding of what LAC means and requires
(2) Attitudes of teachers as subject teachers: Lack responsibility for language learning
(3) Absence of an agent for cross-curricular planning and coordination
Consequences for T.E.: Every learning is language learning, every teaching is language teaching, every teacher is a language specialist!!!

14. LAC: a way towards Plurilingualism
LAC leads to a first/basic form of plurilingualism = acquiring new varieties of language use of LS (or L1) in different subjects
Foreign or second language learning leads to a second form of external / explicit plurilingualism = a new language/a new language repertoire is ac- quired and thus a new means of communication
Bilingual education or CLIL leads to both types

15. A Whole School Language Policy
relating language education in LS to subject-specific language learning and competencies across all subjects
integrating content and language learning (CLIL) by using foreign language(s) for subject-matter teaching
relating education in LS to foreign or second language learning
relating the learning of the first foreign language to that of other foreign languages
relating foreign language education to heritage language education.