Strategies and Practices for Teaching Grammar and Vocabulary in Multilingual Classrooms

Abstract

One of the most important challenges for today's education systems is to provide students, during their schooling, with linguistic and intercultural skills that enable them to function effectively as citizens, acquire knowledge, and develop open attitudes toward others: this vision of teaching languages and cultures is called plurilingual and intercultural education. Plurilingual and intercultural education is guided by several founding principles, such as the recognition of linguistic and cultural diversity guaranteed by the Council of Europe conventions; the right of everyone to use their linguistic varieties as a means of communication, a vehicle for learning, and a means of expressing their belonging; and the centrality of human dialogue, which essentially depends on languages. The experience of otherness through languages and the cultures they convey is a necessary precondition for intercultural understanding and mutual acceptance. In light of these premises, the aim of this paper is to retrace some of the stages that led to the emergence of plurilingualism, especially in education and school settings, as well as to identify some good teaching practices related to the teaching of grammar and vocabulary within multilingual classrooms. Today's society is considered plural and multicultural, but much can and must still be done to ensure that these dimensions are incorporated and recognized in more contexts, first and foremost in school education. The aim is to use linguistic plurality to generate curiosity, sharing, and encourage learning.