Citizenship Education in ELT: examples of context-sensitive activities for plurilingual secondary schools in Argentina

LÓPEZ BARRIOS, MARIO LUIS

Congreso; International conference "Educating the Global Citizen: International Perspectives on Foreign Language Teaching in the Digital Age; 2019

Foreign Language Education in the school context is a privileged space to develop Global Citizen Education. As such, it is a cross-curricular content commonly included in foreign language education curricula in Argentina. In the context of a materials design project currently under way at the School of Languages, National University of Córdoba, Argentina, we propose to develop materials for the particular context of state secondary schools with a Foreign Languages orientation in the upper secondary school stage (16-18 year olds). In these schools, learners continue learning English as the first foreign language started in lower-secondary school, now at a rate of 5 weekly 40-minute classes, and start learning three additional foreign languages (French, Italian, Portuguese). In this presentation, I show three examples of activities for an English class tailored to suit the needs of learners of this particular educational setting in which the interaction among the different foreign languages learned is required by the curriculum. This configuration puts a contrastive linguistic and intercultural approach at the heart of the foreign language learning process. Locally produced materials are especially meaningful in this context, as commercially produced materials tend to miss the degree of reliance on the learners? sociocultural background and proficiency level needed. The topics on which the activities are based deal with the three aspects of citizenship suggested by the local curriculum: identity construction, rights and participation.