Barcelona Summit Agreement: Mother Tongue Plus Two Additional Languages: It Can Be Achieved Through the Education System—Recommendations to Progress from Concept to Reality
摘要
Having explored the Barcelona Summit Agreement (mother tongue plus two additional languages); established that childhood and adolescence are the ideal period to develop plurilingualism; determined that schools are best placed to foster a plurilingual populace; delineated some 15 impediments, largely relating to the education system, to students reaching their plurilingual potential; presented and examined in detail three strategies to foster plurilingual second-level students (harmonising post-primary MFL classes in line with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) through cross-age teaching; replacing the current state MFL exams with CEFR international exams; and implementing Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)); and established the necessity for a national language policy for schools, alongside the requirement for each school to devise its own stakeholder-led language policy and accompanying language planning document, this chapter sets out to answer the central question on which the book is based: Can an education system realise the plurilingual vision of the Barcelona Summit Agreement? In order to answer this question, the chapter evaluates the three proposed strategies in terms of their potential to foster greatly increased numbers of plurilingual students, and based on the findings of this book, puts forward some 21 recommendations. The author concludes that not only is it possible to make the plurilingual vision of the Barcelona Summit Agreement a reality through an education system, but the strategies and recommendations of this book, which have considerable stakeholder support, offer a viable blueprint to achieve it.