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Peter Doyé
Professor at the Technische Universität
Braunschweig
Most previous discussions of Intercomprehension have concentrated on the political adequacy and the didactic realisation of the concept. The problems of how Intercomprehension can contribute to maintaining Europe's cultural richness and diversity and how the concept can be put into practice stood in the foreground of the debates.
What has been neglected or underestimated is the general educational value of
Intercomprehension. In my presentation I would like to show that Intercomprehension is in perfect accordance with basic educational ideas which – by most pedagogues – are considered as principles of any modern education system and that it can contribute considerably to their practical implementation.
I want to treat the following four principles:
Matching/Passung
Consciousness/awareness raising
Motivation
Learner autonomy/Selbstständigkeit
I will also try to demonstrate the accordance of these general educational principles with essential elements of Intercomprehension.
1. Matching
One of the oldest educational principles is that of didactic matching.
It demands that educators gear their teaching activities to the learning activities of their pupils.
It is the logical counterpart to the idea that in every act of learning, human beings select those items of their environment that are suited to their personal growth (Piaget 1976, 137f.).
Teachers as "managers of learning" (Gagné 1973) have the task of assisting the learners in their acquisition of new knowledge; therefore the best they can do is to find out what state of learning their pupils have reached and to proceed from there in their didactic treatment.
Matching can be understood a) in a general educational sense and

2 b) in a specific instructional sense. a) Generally speaking, matching can consist in the appropriateness of educational measures to the development of the learners, in so far as they fulfil the task of promoting intended abilities. They unfold dispositions of children and adolescents and help to develop them in desired directions. A typical example is the programme presented by Curtain and Pesola under the title "Languages and Children – Making the
Match". (1993) b) In a specific instructional sense, matching can consist in starting from the status quo , which means that the teachers set out at the stage of learning that their pupils have reached. It is in this special sense that matching becomes relevant for intercomprehension teaching. In his chapter on cognitive structure Ausubel stressed the role of prior knowledge in the acquisition of new knowledge:
"Since knowledge tends to be organized in sequential and hierarchical fashion, what one already knows in a given field, and how well one knows it, obviously influences one's readiness for related learning." (1968, 26)
His didactic consequence: teachers have to ascertain what learners know and employ methodological devices that are suited to support their readiness for new tasks.
Ausubel has many followers in the theory of instruction, - Hirst and Peters, Heck and
Sandfuchs, just to mention a few. The idea has even found its way into such important international documents as the Common European Framework of Reference. (Council
1998, 12)
Heckhausen, who has introduced the term "Passung" for the concept of didactic matching, has analysed the conditions for the realization of Passung and has come to the conclusion that it can only be achieved in individualized instruction. Never can
Passung be realized in educational programmes, where all learners are treated as if they had equal pre-knowledge. ( 1974)
In this respect, intercomprehension teaching is in a favourable position. It is ideally suited for the realization of didactic matching, because it relies on a careful exploration of existing knowledge and on raising the pupils' awareness of such knowledge. Intercomprehension learners can only succeed in understanding texts in unknown languages, if they exploit their prior knowledge and activate it for the fulfilment of the tasks in question. And their teachers can only help them, if they acknowledge the individual pre-conditions of their pupils and gear all their instructional measures to them. (Meißner 2001, 314) The teaching of intercomprehension is of necessity individualized; for the pre-conditions vary from learner to

3 learner. The general encyclopaedic knowledge, the cultural knowledge and the linguistic knowledge usually differ considerably, even within seemingly homogeneous groups. But here the very principle of intercomprehensive teaching is a plausible and adequate answer.
It does not offer factual information, but strategies for the application of existing knowledge.
2. Consciousness Raising
The application of prior knowledge mentioned above can only be realized, if the learners are aware of such knowledge. Thus the principle of matching depends on a second important principle, namely consciousness raising.
This principle has seen a revival in the past 40 years. Under the influence of cognitive psychology educators have rediscovered the value of conscious learning and teaching. The two sides of the coin:
On the learning side it can be conceived as becoming aware of one's cognitive dispositions; on the teaching side it can be seen as making the learners aware of such dispositions.
The concept of awareness, like that of matching, has a long history in European educational thinking. Its appreciation can be traced back to antiquity. Knowing oneself, knowing one's strengths and weaknesses and to act and - in particular - learn or teach accordingly, has always been regarded as one of the pillars upon which education was to rest.
In modern times and with reference to language education, Hawkins has stressed the value of conscientisation and proposed a comprehensive school course in awareness of language
(Hawkins 1981). Others have added to this idea the concept of language learning awareness
(e.g. Edmondson & House 1997). Last, but not least, the Council of Europe supports conscientisation as a principle of language instruction and suggests that teachers should help their pupils in their learning to learn "by systematically raising the learners' awareness of the learning/teaching process … and to recognise their own cognitive style and to develop their own learning strategies accordingly" (Council for Cultural Co-operation 2001:94).
Additional support for the idea of awareness raising came from the invention and introduction of the European Language Portfolio, which also aims at helping learners to reflect on their linguistic experience and knowledge as a means of promoting their communicative competence in foreign languages. (Sheils 1999)

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Intercomprehension learning and teaching is in complete accordance with these ideas. On the one hand, it relies on the learners' awareness of their latent knowledge; on the other hand, it is ideally suited to develop this awareness further. It awakens consciousness of existing knowledge and at the same time promotes this consciousness for the purpose of practical learning.
The discussion of methodological principles of intercomprehension teaching has recently concentrated on the identification of the domains of knowledge that are important for intercomprehensive communication. Several theorists (for example Klein and Stegmann 2000,
Pencheva and Shopov 2003, Rieder 2001) have proposed classifications of the relevant knowledge, and Doyé (2005) has tried to integrate them into a coherent system:
General knowledge
Cultural knowledge
Situational knowledge
Behavioural knowledge
Pragmatic knowledge
Graphic knowledge
Phonological knowledge
Grammatical knowledge
Lexical knowledge
3. Motivation
The third educational principle – motivation – is closely connected with the second. The protagonists of intercomprehension assume that awareness raising, as described in the preceding paragraph, has a strong influence on the motivation of the pupils. Their argument is this: If the learners become aware of what pre-conditions they fulfil, which funds of knowledge they possess that might help them to understand texts in languages they have not learned so far, then they are better motivated for the encounter with such texts. The assumption seems plausible.

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"There is no learning without motivation." This statement expresses a conviction that can be found as an axiom in most theories of learning and has a long history. As an object of scientific study, however, it is a fairly new topic. Psychologists of the twentieth century have examined this extremely important, but elusive concept from many different views and through a lot of different approaches. Their results are impressive and highly important for any educational planning. Brown (1987) has identified six main educationally relevant classes of motives: the need for exploration, the need for manipulation, the need for activity, the need for stimulation, the need for knowledge, the need for ego enhancement.
All these needs are internal in so far as they are expressions of the individual's basic drive for personal satisfaction. Such needs are commonly called "intrinsic" as opposed to "extrinsic" motives that originate in factors outside the individual such as rewards and punishments. It is a conviction shared by many educational philosophers that intrinsic motivation is more desirable in most areas of education.
Another agreement exists in the conviction that intrinsic motivation can be fostered through education, in particular through careful intelligent teaching. According to Heckhausen (1974) teachers can succeed in this endeavour, if they fulfil two conditions:
They have to make the tasks attractive to the learners.
They have to show them that the goals are attainable.
Attractiveness can be created by inciting the learners' curiosity, by provoking their interest in the content of the task. The novelty of a topic, the extraordinary view in which is proposed, the provocative manner in which it is presented, - they can all render a task attractive.
Intercomprehension is in a favourable position here. The very foreignness of the "unknown" languages and the people who use them are a strong asset. Provided that the foreignness does not repel the learners, it can act as a strong agent of attractiveness. Pupils – like human beings in general – generally tend towards one of two contrary attitudes to persons and things that appear foreign to them: one attitude consists in feeling threatened, in shying away and rejecting the object; in the other the curiosity, the need for exploration (Brown) prevails, and the subject feels attracted.
Intercomprehension teachers can strengthen this second attitude. They can do this by demonstrating that the "new" texts, the "unknown" languages are not so foreign after all, that they contain elements which are very well familiar to the learners. "No language is totally

6 unknown territory", has been a credo right from the beginning of the intercomprehension movement, and the intention of its protagonists has always been to draw the learners' attention to what they already know about the territory.
Attainability is Heckhausen's second condition. A task can only appeal to the learners if they have the impression that with some effort they can manage it and that they can reach the goals connected with it, - that neither too much nor too little is being asked of them and that the objectives are realistic.
The critics of intercomprehension have for a long time been sceptical about the average learner's capability to meet the requirements of a true understanding of foreign texts and utterances. In recent years, however, a methodology of intercomprehension teaching has been developed that refutes such scepticism.
A whole arsenal of transfer strategies and of inferencing techniques has been established; a great variety of deduction and association procedures have been proposed.
The basis for all these measures is the principle of consciousness raising described above. In order to make the learners accept the task(s) of understanding texts and utterances in languages they are not familiar with, they have to become aware of their prior knowledge and activate it appropriately. If they do this, they can profit from their awareness in terms of motivation, - for their competence in intercomprehension and maybe even for their communicative competence in general.
4. Autonomy
Last, but not least: learner’s autonomy. This is another of the basic educational ideals proposed by the majority of pedagogues in Europe. The independent thinker, learner and actor has been advocated for centuries, and the promotion of autonomy has been accepted as the guiding principle in most European school systems.
The principle has gained special importance in modern democratic societies. The democracies of our time will only function efficiently, if they can rely upon independent citizens who are able to decide for themselves what political ends to seek and which political means to employ in order to attain these ends. (Himmelmann 2001, Starkey 2002). The basic idea behind these statements: Man is not only a product of his society, but also a producer of his society.

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Autonomy can be seen as an aim, but also as a way to reach this aim. In the latter sense it means that students and pupils take an active part in the organisation of their learning.
They become the "agents of their own learning" (Hirst and Peters) and decide about the objectives, contents and methods of their development. The fact that in practice most of these decisions are not taken by the learners alone, but in co-operation with their teachers, is no substantial restriction of the principle.
The postulate of learner autonomy has found its way into foreign language pedagogy mainly by the work of the Council of Europe. Its project groups took their inspiration from Holec's seminal publication Autonomy and foreign language learning (1981) and integrated the idea into the Common European Framework of reference
(Council 1998, 44 ff.). Also the Council's final report on the extensive project "Language
Learning for European Citizenship" contains the strong recommendation
"to promote young persons' independence of thought and action, increase their ability to steer, manage and evaluate their own learning and develop their sense and exercise of social responsibility" (Council 1996, 10).
It is this concept of the autonomous learner that leads the advocates of intercomprehension to the conviction that their programme is an ideal way to its realisation. They see it as autonomous learning par excellence.
The acquisition of intercomprehension competence lends itself to being organised as a self-directed process, where the learners identify their needs, become aware of their pre-knowledge in the various domains (see above) and apply it for the understanding of "new" texts and utterances. They have to do this independently and individually as the dispositions vary from learner to learner. But the teachers help them by showing them how to activate their latent knowledge and by teaching them the strategies of transfer and interpretation.
"Les strategies transférentielles … sont au cœur de la didactique de l'intercomprèhension".
(Meißner 2004, 130)
Here lies the main difference between intercomprehension learning and teaching and conventional foreign language instruction. In the latter, the emphasis is on the teaching of new content (words, phrases, utterances etc.), in the former it lies on the mediation of strategies to understand such content. In this sense the acquisition of intercomprehension competence is

8 bound to be exercised as an autonomous process and is superior to traditional ways of foreign language education.
5. Conclusion
It was the intention of this paper to demonstrate the general agreement of characteristic features of intercomprehension learning and teaching with basic principles of European education. This agreement is important for the discussion of a general introduction of intercomprehension into existing European education systems.
Four characteristics were dealt with. For analytical purposes they were treated separately, but it is obvious that they are closely interrelated. The consciousness of learning is suited to create motivation and to promote autonomy and is supported by teachers through matching their assistance with the dispositions of the learners.

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References
Ausubel, David P. (1968): Educational Psychology. A Cognitive View. New York/Chicago:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Brown, H.D. (1987): Principles of Language Learning and Teaching.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
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Learning for European Citizenship".
Strasbourg: Council of Europe
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Assessment. A Common European Framework of Reference. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.
Council for Cultural Co-operation (2001): European Language Portfolio. Strasbourg:
Council of Europe.
Curtain, Helena & Pesola, Carol Ann (1994): Languages and Children – Making the Match.
New York: Longman.
Doyé, Peter (2005): Intercomprehension. Reference Study / L'intercmpréhension. Etude de référence.
Strasbourg: Council of Europe.
Edmondson, Willis J. & House, Juliane (Hrsg.)(1997): Language Awareness. FluL. 26.
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Gagné, Robert (1975): The Conditions of Learning. London & New York:Holt, Rinehart
&Winston.
Hawkins, Eric (1981): Modern Languages in the Curriculum.
Cambridge: CUP.
Heckhausen, Heinz (1974): Förderung der Lernmotivierung und der intellektuellen
Tüchtigkeiten. In: Roth, Heinrich (Hrsg.): Begabung und Lernen. Stuttgart: Klett, 193-228.
Himmelmann, Gerhard (2001): Demokratie Lernen als Lebens-, Gesellschafts- und
Herrschaftsform. Schwalbach: Wochenschauverlag.
Hirst, P.H. & Peters, R.S. (1979): The Logic of Education.
London & Henley: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Holec, Henri (1981): Autonomy and foreign language learning. Oxford: Pergamon.
Keck, Rudolf & Sandfuchs, Uwe (eds.)(1994):
Wörterbuch der Schulpädagogik.
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Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt.
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(Hrsg.)(2001): Bausteine für einen neokommunikativen Französischunterricht . Tübingen:
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Abstract
Most previous discussions of Intercomprehension have concentrated on the political adequacy and the didactic realisation of the concept. The problems of how Intercomprehension can contribute to maintaining Europe's cultural richness and diversity and how the concept can be put into practice stood in the foreground of the debates.
What has been neglected or underestimated is the general educational value of
Intercomprehension. In my presentation I will show that Intercomprehension is in perfect accordance with basic educational ideas which – by most pedagogues – are considered as principles of any modern education system and that it can contribute considerably to their practical implementation.
I will mainly treat the following principles:
Matching/Passung
Consciousness/awareness raising
Motivation
-
Learner’s autonomy/Selbstständigkeit
I will also try to demonstrate the accordance of these general educational principles with essential elements of Intercomprehension.