Between commodification and
social integration
An investigation of central concepts of
foreign language education
Stephan Breidbach
Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, Germany
Introduction

Learners’ voices: some attitudes towards English of
German A-level students

Communicative competence in the neoliberal context:
learner autonomy - task-based language learning
Filling the gap: anthropological, cultural, and political
dimensions of language awareness
Converging discourses in reflexivity: reconstructing
language learing and language learners as existing in
language


The best reason to learn English is ...
N = 16
communicative:
... because you are able to communicate with everyone from 10
everywhere wherever you are.
pragmatic:
... because you can use it later on.
1
... because it is important for a job/business.
2
affective:
... because you like the language/you want to learn it yourself.
2
... you like speaking different languages.
1
What English means to me ...
“English means independence to me. If you’re able to speak English you can
communicate with people all over the world and you could even live and work
in a English-speaking country. I think it’s also very good for your confidence
to know that you can express yourself and that you can conversate with
foreign people. …”
“… Another good thing is that you can make friends. Through my
exchange I found friends from all over the world, … from Japan,
Venezuela, Australia, the US and Saudi-Arabia. I can stay in contact
with them and am able to understand them because we both speak
English, even though we are from different countries. To me English
means a lot and it’s important for me to know it.”
“Nowadays english is everywhere. … One big hobby of mine is music,
specially british rockmusic. So I love to listen to british english. …
When I’m looking back now, I’m a bit mad about myself for being
too lazy, to organize an exchange to another country, because I would
love to speak this language more fluently. …”
Communicative comptence
Current understanding as participation in the sense of the
learners’ functional capacity to take part in
communicative processes in a foreign language
Conceptual gap through pragmatification: loss of sociocultural and political dimension
Learner autonomy
“In formal educational contexts, learners are autonomous
when they set their own learning agenda and take
responsibility for planning, monitoring and evaluating
particular learning activities and the learning process
overall. The practice of learner autonomy thus depends on,
but also develops and expands, the learner’s capacity for
detachment, critical reflection, decision making, and
independent action.” (Little 1999: 77)
“Changes designed to give more control to learners are
implemented in order to achieve reductions in unit costs
and are accompanied by measures that ensure that little real
power is actually transferred. ”(Benson 2001: 19)
Task-based language teaching
“In task-based language teaching, the ‘task’ is used as the basic unit of
analysis at the levels of goals (‘syllabus’), educational activities
(‘methodology’) and assessment. (...) ‘task-based’ refers to the fact that:
 the attainment goals of a second language course are, derived from
an analysis of why people are learning the second language and
what functional things they want/need to use it for (‘target tasks’);
...” (Van den Branden 2007: 12)
“Through the process of standard-setting (...) and associated psychometric
analyses of item characteristics (...), cut-scores will be determined for each
proficiency scale, which distinguish students according to the proficiency levels
of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (...)”
(Rupp/Vock/Harsch/Köller 2008: 44)
Dimensions of language awareness
1. Anthropology:
Language awareness as reflecting on the nature of
language and its role in human life.
2. Social psychology:
Language awareness as reflecting on the human capacity of
language and its implications for thinking, learning and
social (inter-)action.
3. Political philosophy:
Language awareness as reflecting on communicative
mechanism(s) for exerting power and control.
Task-based, awareness rising
language education
Existing in language(s)
Enabling learners to reconstruct
languages and communication
within the context of the individual
learner’s experience
Implications for the reconstruction of language(s)
within the context of the learners‘ experiences
1. Conceptual:
Critical language awareness as part of a reflexive dimension of communicative
competence
2. Curricular:
Curriculum and a methodology of teaching for the awareness of the
anthropological, socio-cultural, and political aspects of language
3. Institutional:
Institutional structure and interactional settings that allow for the identification of
topics and tasks the language learners consider relevant in their individual
biographic situation
4. Political:
Language awareness as resistance to reductionist interpretation of
communicative competence
Language awareness helping to overcome apparent injustices of the schooling
system