LSSLT 22: The Interface of Romance Languages

The Interface of Romance Languages

Using Plurilingual Sensitivity as a Pedagogical Tool

María Alonso Alonso, Carlos Cernadas Carrera, Laura Torrado Mariñas
Universidade de Vigo

Having focused part of their research interests in plurilingual education and foreign language acquisition, María Alonso Alonso, Carlos Cernadas Carrera and Laura Torrado Mariñas are currently working at the Universidade de Vigo and at the Universidade Federal do Pará. With their present proposal, they aim to satisfy the existing demand for bringing theory and practice together in the field of language teaching. With this aim in mind, linguistic theory will be directly applied to a specific philosophy and methodology to provide a plurilingual approach to the teaching of French, Spanish and Portuguese to English-speaking students in order to maximise their potential.

Following the CEFR’s expected learning outcomes, common challenges for the students’ performance in the target languages will be identified in order to implement a theoretical approach that will be complemented with practical orientation. Essentially, the main focus is to infer that it is of paramount importance to consider the linguistic structures shared by the three curricular Romance languages and English, to promote the transfer of a cognitive/academic competence. With this key motivation, this monograph claims that an active development of plurilingual sensitivity is needed for students so they can benefit more effectively from foreign language instruction.

ISBN 9783862884759. LINCOM Studies in Second Language Teaching 22. 176pp. 2013.