The Slovenian dictionary defines multilingualism as the knowledge and regular use of several languages. However, language teachers never teach just one language, but also the culture that is inextricably linked to it. The development of multilingualism therefore also includes the development of intercultural competence. This enables learners not only to understand other cultures, but also to better understand their own and to decentre (disengage from) their own cultural assumptions. Nowadays, pluralistic approaches are used in language learning or teaching. These are approaches that involve the use of multiple languages and cultures. However, there is a lack of criteria to test the level of knowledge, skills and attitudes that are the goal of these approaches. For this reason, the Council of Europe has developed FREPA, The Reference Framework for Pluralistic Approaches to Languages and Cultures . FREPA serves to develop curricula, make connections between the development of communicative competence across languages and make connections between the pluralistic approaches themselves.
The FREPA reference framework contains three main domains: knowledge, attitudes and skills, which are expanded into sections and more specific descriptors. The Framework was used to determine the extent to which nursery and primary schools (considered together) and secondary schools develop multilingualism. The descriptors were sent to three kindergartens, fourteen primary schools and eight secondary schools across Slovenia between 2017 and 2021 as part of the Languages Matter project. The results were shown for both kindergartens and primary schools and for secondary schools. The survey aimed to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference between the educational institutions and the domain descriptors institutions used to develop multilingualism, both over the five years and over the years of the survey. By using graphical representations where the results were organised by survey year, we have shown that teachers do not sufficiently integrate cultural awareness and cultural instruction into their language teaching. The study also answered the research hypotheses, where we separated the analyses by educational institution. Using statistical tests, we found that educational institutions promoted and rated the knowledge and skills domain the highest, while the attitudes domain was consistently rated the lowest. Statistical tests also showed that all three domains were more developed in primary schools and kindergartens than in secondary schools, suggesting that the development of multilingualism based on the FREPA/CARA descriptors is more intensive in early education.
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