ELT&+WHY+L&+L+Policy


 * __COUNCIL OF EUROPE LANGUAGE EDUCATION POLICY:__ **

The Council of Europe promotes policies which have as purpose to bolster up the languages rights, plurilingualism, linguistic diversity, mutual understanding, democratic citizenship and social cohesion. More specific, the aim of the Council is to develop the idea of communication through a number of European languages. This kind of communication, gives indirectly the opportunity to all those languages to show and highlight their unique identities and cultural differences which must be accepted among the European community. Interestingly, this can be seen as a democratic and social european process with a lot of benefits. According to the Council of Europe, "Plurilingualism" and therefore the variety of languages skills, help individuals in employment opportunities but also in political and social processes participation. To conclude, we can claim that the European Council alleges that education system of every society needs to develop learners' plurilingual competence in order to make them able to perceive and mediate the relationships which exist among languages and culltures.


 * __LANGUAGE EDUCATION POLICY PROFILE IN CYPRUS 2003-05:__ **

//English// is not just the most important foreign language in Cyprus but it can also be definitely characterised as the "Second Language" of the entire Cypriot society. //English// language is used as the "Lingua Franca" in our island for the purpose of communication with the other, not- Greek- speaking outgroups like the tourists, the immigrants, even with Cypriots/Greeks who live for many years in the UK, USA or in Australia. It's a fact that //English// are used in oral and written form, from governmental, legal and media areas in Cyprus. However, Cypriots are exposed to //English// language in every day life, that's why educational curriculum involves //English// in schools and young learners between the ages of 10-15 are necessarily taught the particular language. It is noteworthy the fact that even if specialized in //English// academics teach the language in national schools, a great amount of the parents but students too believe that the level of //English// reached in these schools is quite insufficient. That's why many children take private lessons of //English// in private institutions called "frondistiria", in order to amplify their //English// knowledge. Parents very often tend to aggregate their children in private schools too in which the solo language in every lesson is //English//. The fact that pupils between the ages of 12-15 are taught not just //English// but French too in their schools and that later on in Lyceum students must choose another foreign language to learn, many of them experience failure in acquiring more than one foreign language at the same chronicle period. In Cyprus parents and students who are against this concept of plurilingualism, allege the idea of learning one language very well rather than have partial knowledge in a variety of languages. So, very often many of those parents arrive at the decision of advising their children to learn first the //English// language very well because at the time, this is the second official language in Cyprus.