Fleeing from the monolingual classroom: Translingualism and CLA as organic approaches to EFL learning

Abstract

[eng] In contemporary society, adopting monolingual practices in the EFL classroom has proven to be counterproductive since they do not meet the needs of today’s multicultural and multilingual communities. Teachers still prefer adopting a traditional monolingual approach to foreign language teaching, deeming the use of learners’ L1 in the classroom as a sign of language incompetence instead of perceiving it as a manifestation of their enriching varied background or as an opportunity to promote cultural awareness and critical thinking. This monolingual bias works to the detriment of students and it may cause demotivation, low self-esteem, and embarrassment in the EFL classroom harming their communicative potential. This Master’s Thesis will reflect on specific ways in which to increase students’ interest in EFL learning and improve their communicative competence by proposing a teaching proposal that will focus on its importance and usefulness in today’s globalised world. This can be done by introducing more organic and inclusive approaches to EFL learning, that may suit their diverse cultural experiences and linguistic repertoire. For that, this dissertation contemplates two alternative approaches that could be applied to foreign language teaching: translingualism and critical language awareness. Applying these types of methodologies to counteract the outdated and unfitted monolingual practices seeks to improve the communicative competence of students by working on others such as critical thinking, intercultural awareness, and argumentation ability. To do that, this thesis offers three workshop proposals targeted at different levels of linguistic competence. As a result, the undertaking of these sorts of activities would benefit the students’ language learning process and personal development.