Reviving Catalan at School

Challenges and Instructional Approaches

By Joaquim Arnau

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2013 Joaquim Arnau and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78309-025-9

Contents

Contributors, vii,
Introduction, xiii,
1 Language-in-education Policies in the Catalan Language Area Joaquim Arnau and F. Xavier Vila, 1,
2 The Acquisition of Catalan by Immigrant Children. The Effect of Length of Stay and Family Language Angel Huguet, Jose-Luis Navarro, Silvia-Maria Chireac and Clara Sanso, 29,
3 Language Attitudes of Latin-American Newcomers in Three Secondary School Reception Classes in Catalonia Mireia Trenchs-Parera and Adriana Patino-Santos, 49,
4 Training a Primary Education Teacher to Teach Expository Text Comprehension Strategies Nüria Castells, Isabel Solé, Cristina Luna, Eva Lordân, Esther Nadal, Mariana Miras and Sandra Espino, 72,
5 Teacher Training in Literacy Instruction and Academic Achievement in a Multilingual Classroom Joaquim Arnau, Haridian M de Aysa and Sonia Jarque, 96,
6 Production of Texts with Multimodal Resources by Two Groups of Primary Education Students Aneska Ortega, Julia Coromina and Ana Teberosky, 120,
7 Interlinguistic Reflection on Teaching and Learning Languages Oriol Guasch Boyé, 136,
8 Affording Students Opportunities for the Integrated Learning of Content and Language: A Contrastive Study on Classroom Interactional Strategies Deployed by Two CLIL Teachers Cristina Escobar Urmeneta and Natalia Evnitskaya, 158,
9 Integrated Languages Project Rosa Maria Ram’trez and Teresa Serra, 183,

CHAPTER 1

Language-in-education Policies in the Catalan Language Area

Joaquim Arnau and F. Xavier Vila

The territories where Catalan is traditionally spoken as a native language are: Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands and la Franja, in Spain; Northern Catalonia, in France; Andorra; and the Sardinian city of Alghero (Italy). In the past, all these societies developed quite different language-in-education policies and models, ranging from monolingualism in the State language to many different bilingual and even plurilingual programmes. Today, after a decade of unexpected and massive recent foreign immigration, these very systems have to adapt to a new multilingual, multicultural environment, where immigrant languages combine with globalisation, turning them into an attractive sociolinguistic laboratory for comparative language-in-education policies. This chapter provides a summary of available research results in connection with language learning, language practices, the impact on social integration and cohesion, and on academic achievement.

Introduction

Catalan is a Romance language closely related to Occitan, French, Italian and Spanish, native to a geographical area divided among four states, namely Spain, France, Andorra and Italy. In Spain, the historical Catalan language area covers Catalonia (7,512,381 inhabitants); most of Valencia (also called the Valencian Community) (4,327,320); the Balearic Islands (1,106,049); a stretch of land in Aragon on the border with Catalonia, known as la Franja (48,888); and a handful of hamlets in the Murcia Region known as Carxe/ Carche (769). In France, Catalan is the historical language of the Department of the Eastern Pyrenees (445,737). Catalan is the sole official language of Andorra, the small independent state in the Pyrenees (85,015). Finally, Catalan has also been the traditional language of the Sardinian city of Alghero (l’Alguer in Catalan: 40,803), in Italy, since the 14th century (Sorolla, 2011).

A fully standardised language during the late middle ages, when it was the main official language of the Crown of Aragon, the position of Catalan weakened at the turn of the 15th to 16th centuries, when this Crown became part of the Habsburgs’ multinational empire, soon associated with Castilian, also known as Spanish. After the Spanish War of Succession (1700–1714), which put an end to the wide autonomy of the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon, the successive central authorities pursued the linguistic homogenisation of Spain by spreading the knowledge and use of Spanish (Ferrer, 1986). Leaving aside the small parenthesis of the 2nd Spanish Republic (1931–1939), Catalan was repeatedly banned from schools even before the beginning of compulsory education in Spain. The military dictatorships of Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923–1929) and especially Francisco Franco (1936/39–1975) were particularly severe in their anti-Catalan practices (Vila-i-Moreno, 2008).

In this context, the Catalan-speaking population started to learn the state language and to internalise its hegemonic position vis-à-vis Catalan. Both processes were sped up by the massive immigration of native speakers of the official languages (Spanish, French or Italian, according to the territory) during the 20th century, and by the ever-increasing presence of mass media (Pueyo, 1996). Thus, between 1900 and 1950 monolingual Catalan speakers gradually disappeared, replaced by bilingual and monolingual speakers of the official languages, basically internal immigrants.

Contemporary Language-in-education Policies and Models

The last decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century witnessed remarkable changes in language policies (Strubell & Boix-Fuster, 2011; Vila-i-Moreno, 2008). On the one hand, the nation–state structures changed. Spain evolved into a constitutional, parliamentary monarchy with a semi-federal structure known as the ‘State of autonomies’, which allowed the three largest Catalan-speaking societies (i.e. Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands) to start to develop their own language-in-education policies. France and Italy also introduced some degree of regionalisation into their state structures. On the other hand, the general ideological context evolved, with new discourses and practices slowly emerging that were more respectful of individuals’ linguistic preferences and of linguistic diversity in general (Spolsky, 2004).

In Spain, where the bulk of Catalan speakers live, contemporary language policies have become much more pluralistic than they used to be, and, while Spanish remains the state’s sole official language, Catalan has become official in almost all its historical territories, namely Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. All schoolchildren (i.e. including those with a non-Catalan L1) living in these territories are expected to learn both official languages. Since the late 1980s, language policies have been distributed among the central and the autonomous authorities, and each autonomous government has developed its own (educational) language policy, causing great disparity.

Language-in-education policies in the 1980s and 1990s were mainly concerned with introducing Catalan as a subject and/or as a means of instruction into a society formed basically by the descendants of locals (usually Catalan speakers except in some spots where language shift had effectively taken place) and the children and grandchildren of basically Spanish-speaking immigrants who had arrived in the territories particularly between 1950 and 1975. However, in the early 2000s, two ingredients had to be taken into account: more than 2 million foreign immigrants arrived in these territories from all over the world in less than a decade, basically attracted by the construction industry, jumping from less than 1% to more than 16% of the total population. On the other hand, globalisation was taking its toll in the form of increased pressure to significantly improve the mastery of English. Owing to the population movements of the last decade, successive surveys (even the most recent ones) only coincide partially regarding the demolinguistic composition of the territories analysed (Sorolla, 2011, op. cit). In Catalonia, for example, during 2008–2009, Catalan L1 speakers represented a third of the total inhabitants, while the number of speakers with Spanish as their first language (including the hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans that had recently arrived) represented a little over half of the total population. Catalan–Spanish bilingual L1 speakers only accounted for 5%, while 10% of the population, mainly newly arrived immigrants, spoke other languages and language combinations as their L1. However, it is important to remember that the situation is fluctuating because there are no clear barriers between linguistic groups; so at any given time and place, 40% of inhabitants state Catalan to be their language of identification and usual language, and a third of individuals with Spanish as their first language pass Catalan on to their children, especially in mixed couples. Regarding those individuals that speak languages other than those of the country, they tend to adopt Spanish as their vehicular language, even in the family environment. Nonetheless, major economic recession has overturned the migratory flux. The Instituto Nacional de Estadística (the Spanish National Institute of Statistics) (2011) calculates that around 80,000 immigrants, especially Latin Americans, will have left Spain by the end of 2011, a trend that looks to continue for several years, although this has not been shown by the surveys available. In any case, in less than a century, the virtually monolingual Catalan-speaking society has become first bilingual and later multilingual.

In the next sections, we will look at the language-in-education models applied in each territory. We will provide more in-depth information on Catalonia owing to the weight it represents as a whole as opposed to the other territories and to the number of studies carried out there. Only after the models have been clarified will we turn to the results of such models, in the next chapter, also with the focus mainly being on Catalonia.

The language-in-education model in Catalonia

The establishment of a linguistic conjunction model

The 1979 Statute of Autonomy established the official status of Catalan and Spanish and stipulated that both languages would be taught to the school-going population. Initially, each centre is allowed to choose the means of instruction, and hence a linguistic continuum is formed between schools where Catalan is the vehicular language, centres where both languages are used in equal amounts and centres where Spanish is the vehicular language. Although initially there is a strong correlation between the language of the student body and the vehicular language, an important aspect of this policy that is maintained today is that it attempts to avoid creating separate schools for Catalan speakers and Spanish speakers.

The redefining of the language-in-education model in Catalonia towards introducing and extending the position of Catalan was initially based in Catalonia’s 1983 Linguistic Normalisation Act. The new model de conjuncio en catald (‘Catalan conjunction model’) made Catalan the normal (but not necessarily exclusive) medium of instruction in Catalonia. Catalan and Spanish should have a proper presence in curricula so that all students become bilingual and biliterate by the end of compulsory education. Initial instruction in Spanish is granted to children whose parents apply for it, although this only happens on very rare occasions. At the same time, schools with at least 70% of non-Catalan L1 speakers may take advantage of language immersion programmes.

The education system in Catalonia progressively adopted Catalan as its language of teaching, especially in primary education: while only 3% of primary schools used Catalan as the main vehicular language in 1978, by 1990, 90% of primary schools and practically 50% of secondary schools declared that they use Catalan as the prevalent means of instruction.

There are no recent official figures regarding linguistic use in teaching. In theory, Catalan is the normal vehicular language in all primary schools, although often some subjects have been introduced in Spanish and, even more so, in English, with these languages being taught as subjects, three hours per week.

In 1994, a ruling by Spain’s Constitutional Court declared that the conjunction model was constitutional. The 1998 Language Policy Act consolidated this model in Catalonia. In 2006, Catalonia approved by referendum a new Statute of Autonomy, which considers the essential elements of this linguistic model, including the right of newly arrived students to receive special help with the language. However, in 2010, after four years of heated and hugely politicised debate, the Spanish Constitutional Court ruled that Spanish had to be reintroduced as a language of instruction on par with Catalan, and similar rulings by the Supreme Court (September 2010) and Catalonia’s High Court (2011, 2013) have confirmed this decision. In the midst of great media turmoil, the Government of Catalonia has answered that nothing should (or would) be changed in the model. Applying this new law would force Catalonia to change its current linguistic model.

Immersion programmes

The first Catalan immersion programme was created in 1983 in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a town in Barcelona’s industrial belt, where Spanish is the first language of more than 90% of the population (Vila-i-Moreno, 1996). It was believed that the benefits of a programme based on additive bilingualism provided maximum competence in L2 without losing competence in L1. In contrast to immersion programmes implemented in other locations, such as Canada, the immersion programme in Catalonia was not an enrichment programme designed as an option among others. The model, promoted by the education administration, was based on the belief (and later confirmed by evidence) that other school models aimed at Spanish speakers would not be as effective as the immersion model. As was soon proved, in the same way as in Canada or the Basque Country, in contexts with little presence of the school language, only maximum exposure to Catalan ensured learning: without immersion, the Spanish-speaking student body only achieved a very precarious competence in the L2 (Alsina et al., 1983). Thanks to stimulus given by the administration, teaching staff and families, the experience was extended throughout the territory, so that ten years later, in 1993, more than 200,000 students had enrolled in the programme (Artigal, 1995). In this sense, the Catalan immersion programme has been a very important educational experience, considering the number of students involved and the goals set to ensure that the entire Spanish-speaking school population masters both official languages, Catalan and Spanish, in a school system rooted in the Catalan cultural reality (Arenas & Muset, 2007).

The results obtained met expectations, as two assessments performed on a wide range of students illustrated (Ribes, 1993; Serra, 1997). The Spanish-speaking students in the immersion programme, when compared with other children in their same linguistic group that followed a mainly Spanish-dominated syllabus, had better oral and written competence in Catalan at all school levels (from second to fifth year in primary education). As regards Spanish, the students of the immersion programme achieved a level of understanding and expression similar to their Spanish-speaking counterparts who did not follow the programme. Furthermore, Ribes showed that students who were less competent cognitively were those that took best advantage of the immersion programme. In addition, the Spanish-speaking students had a favourable attitude towards Catalan and Spanish, whatever programme was followed.

Four factors explain these positive results. The first are psychological: students that learn a L2 transfer these skills easily to L1, which is also taught at school (Arnau, 1985a). The second is pedagogical: a L2 is learnt more effectively when contents of the syllabus are taught through it and when teachers monitor understanding and adapt to students’ emerging L2 skills (Arnau, 1994). There are also social factors: the students’ L1 is a dominant language in society; therefore students have greater opportunity to use it. Finally, the favourable attitude to learning Catalan was also an important factor.

Owing to its success, the Catalan immersion programmes have been an observation ground for European psychopedagogy experts and psycholinguists (Arnau & Artigal, 1998). More specifically, ‘Catalan-style’ Swedish immersion programmes were created in Finland after a number of collaboration sessions between teachers and the Finnish education administrations (Lauren, 1994).

Teaching for immigrant students (a ‘new immersion’)

Catalonia has received a considerable amount of foreign immigrants of different cultural and linguistic origins in a short period. The arrival of new immigration flows has had a clear reflection in classrooms: while foreign students represented 0.58% in Catalan classrooms in 1999, by the 2007–2008 academic year they represented 12.9%. More than 90% are children of economic immigrants. Most come from South and Central America (43.8%) and the Maghreb (25.8%), although there are also significant percentages from Eastern Europe (EU and non-EU), Asia and Oceania, and from other parts of Africa (Querol & Strubell, 2009). These students are present in similar numbers at all educational levels, and between 2000 and 2010, they were able to enter schools at any point during the academic year, which caused major teaching problems.

As opposed to the Spanish immigrations of the 20th century, the new immigration flows have been very heterogeneous. In 2006, in primary education reception classrooms, there were students speaking 57 different languages, from 96 countries of origin (Vila Mendiburu et al., 2009a), many of which could not express themselves in their mother tongue in the classroom because the teachers did not understand them. All had to learn Catalan, Spanish and English as a necessary requirement for their academic progress. In this sense, during the first decade of 2000, a new immersion model needed to be developed in Catalonia.

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