Language Education in Creating a Multilingual Europe

The European Union has conceived itself as multilingual since its beginning in 1956. EFNIL, the network of the central language institutions of all states of the Union and several other European countries, promotes the enhancement of individual plurilingualism of the people in Europe as an important prerequisite for European multilingualism. The EFNIL conference hosted 2011 by the British Council in London was devoted to the discussion of how individual plurilingualism is being achieved by language education in Europe. In this volume, several general reflections on the main topic are followed by a critical discussion of present language instruction in the United Kingdom and reports on foreign language education in various other countries. Reports on four current projects that aim to describe the present linguistic diversity of Europe follow. A detailed interim report on the results of one of these projects (ELM) concludes the book.

Gerhard Stickel was the director of the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (Mannheim). He was a co-founder of the European Federation of National Institutions for Language (EFNIL) and has been its president since 2003. Michael Carrier is Head of English Language Innovation for the British Council. He is serving on the Board of EAQUALS as special advisor. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Member of the Institute of Directors (IOD) and of the Society of Authors (London).

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Contents: Sir Vernon Ellis: Opening address – Gerhard Stickel: Opening/Eröffnung/Aperture – Piet van der Craen : Comment le multilinguisme rend nos élèves plus intelligents. Aspects sociétaux et individuels du multilinguisme en Europe – Waldemar Martyniuk: Dealing with challenges in European language education. The contribution of the European Centre for Modern Languages in Graz – Bessie Dendrinos: Multi- and monolingualism in foreign language education in Europe – Claude Truchot : La création d’une Europe multilingue. Quel role pour les universités ? Intégrer les langues nationales dans l’internationalisation de l’enseignement supérieur – Luca Tomasi: Aspects and prospects of EU multilingualism – Michael Carrier: Overview on multilingual education in the United Kingdom – Lid King: Valuing languages from an early age – Linda Parker: Languages in secondary schools in the UK – Tim Connell: Languages in Higher Education in the UK – Xavier North : En quelle(s) langue(s) transmettre le savoir ? Les termes du débat en France – Ulrike Haslinger/Anna Lasselsberger: Multilingualism in Austrian schools. Chances and challenges – Pirkko Nuolijärvi: Language education policy and practice in Finland – Anna D?browska: Multilingual education in Poland – Marilena Karyolemou/Maria Magklara: Multilingualism at the periphery. Language centered activities in zones of educational priority – Georg Rehm/Hans Uszkoreit: Language Technology for multilingual Europe. Current status and future prospects – Martin Hope: Language Rich Europe – Enikö Héja/Tamás Váradi: EFNILEX online dictionaries – Sabine Kirchmeier-Andersen/Cecilia Robustelli/Jennie Spetz/Gerhard Stickel/Nina Teigland: European Language Monito (ELM) – Dimitris Kokoroskos: European Language Monitor (ELM). Interim Report.