CALL FOR PAPER

Vol. 15, n.1, 2019

EMBRACING LANGUAGE AWARENESS AND LANGUAGE DIVERSITY IN THE 21^ST CENTURY

Guest Editors

Letizia Cinganotto, INDIRE, Italy
Kristina Lodding Cunningham,Senior Policy Officer, in charge of Multilingualism in the Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture of the European Commission

Important dates
Initial manuscripts due November, 15^th, 2018
Notification and Review Comments December, 15^h, 2018
Camera Ready manuscript due January, 10^th, 2019
Special Issue published January, 2019

“Language competences are at the heart of the ambitious vision to create a European Education Area. Being able to speak foreign languages is not only a competence needed for studying abroad and on increasingly international job markets. It also opens new perspectives and enables people to discover other cultures. Studies show that across the board, EU Member States are not making progress fast enough towards the EU-wide agreed goal that every European should be able to learn two foreign languages from an early age. In fact language proficiency levels among students at the end of compulsory education are generally low, and very large differences exist between Member States. With increasing intra-European mobility as well as unprecedented levels of school children arriving from third countries speaking different languages, we need to reconsider the challenges and opportunities we are faced with, in order to make multilingualism a true asset of the EU”.

This is what the European Commission states as an introduction to the “proposal for a Council Recommendation on a comprehensive approach to language teaching and learning” (May 2018). The Recommendation embraces the concept of “language-awareness in schools”, which is not new, but has taken on a new impetus in the context of increased diversity and the need to re-think language education in schools in Europe.

Considering the inputs provided by the European Commission in order to improve the quality of the learning pathways and the language learning outcomes of the 21st century students and to reach Barcelona objectives (two languages plus the mother tongue) relaunched by the European Commission, the Special Issue is aimed at gathering research, projects, initiatives in this field which could represent “success stories” providing suggestions, studies, research outputs and practical ideas for reshaping future language learning scenarios.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Language learning pathways aimed at specific competence levels, based on the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, also considering the latest “Companion Volume with new descriptors” (September 2017);
• Language awareness in education and training, taking account of the variety of learners' language competences;
• CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) pedagogies;
• Bilingual or plurilingual initiatives, projects or research;
• Teacher training and job shadowing abroad;
• Innovative, inclusive and multilingual teaching practices (debate, flipped classroom, TEAL, etc.);
• Research, projects, initiatives on language learning or CLIL with digital media (CALL/TELL/MALL);
• Research, projects, initiatives on language learning or CLIL, using European tools and platforms such as the School Education Gateway or eTwinning.

References: 

• Website: Towards a European Education Area – a repository of fact sheets and documents (https://ec.europa.eu/education/initiatives/european-education-area_en)
• Proposal for a Council Recommendation: A comprehensive approach to Language Teaching and Learning (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1527006129608&uri=COM:2018:272:FIN)
• Annex to the Recommendation: Language Awareness in Schools  (https://ec.europa.eu/education/sites/education/files/lang_en_annexe_proposition_part1_v4.pdf)
• Commission Staff Working Document accompanying the Recommendation: Scientific background and case studies  (https://ec.europa.eu/education/sites/education/files/lang_swd_part_1_1_en_autre_document_travail_service_part1_v4.pdf)
• Annex to the Staff Working Document: Facts and Figures  (https://ec.europa.eu/education/sites/education/files/lang_swd_part_2_1_en_autre_document_travail_service_part2_v2.pdf)

All submitted papers will be subject to a selection mechanism

Language: all contributions/papers must be written in English
Author Guidelines: http://www.je-lks.org/ojs/index.php/Je-LKS_EN/about/submissions

The Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society (Je-LKS) (eISSN 1971-8829) is published by the Italian Society of e-Learning since 2005 and in 2018 has published its fourteenth volume, consisting of three issues. Je-LKS is indexed, among other things, on on AACE-EdITLib, Web of Science Content Expansion (Thompson Reuters) Scopus, Elsevier, DOAJ, IET Inspec, CiteFactor and in 2018 reached a h-index of 17 (Publish or Perish based on Google Scholar database). ANVUR Ranking: A-Class for Sector 11-D1 and 11-D2