Nuremberg Recommendations
Objective: the interculturally aware child

The early start involves calling up all available resources in order to give children the best possible prospects for development in the foreign language learning process; this involves the emotional, creative, social, cognitive and linguistic dimensions of overall childhood development. But it also very much involves intercultural communicative competence.

A child who is alert to and interested in the intercultural dimension has the potential to develop later into an intercultural speaker ^[1] and this is a declared aim of current foreign language teaching.

The learner’s foreign language competence is no longer measured solely against the linguistic competence of native speakers, but in terms of his or her ability to master the multiple and various tasks of intercultural communication. For the child learner, and in early foreign language teaching, the types of stimulus and educational content provided should form a basis on which the open-mindedness and tolerance of the intercultural speaker can find scope to develop. The early encounter with the foreign language must awaken interest in languages, foster enjoyment in language-learning, and ‘motivate the child to converse meaningfully in a language not his or her own’.

Recommendations:

The early start in foreign language learning, while concentrating on development of linguistic competences, should also foster general and intercultural abilities and learning strategies.

Development of general competences – such as e.g. self-competence and social competence – does not occur in isolation from that of other competences, and is accordingly an important concern during early foreign language learning.

In the context of any early foreign language programme, efforts should be made to foster the development of the following general competences:

Self-competence: By way of achievements and insights gained during acquisition of a foreign language, the child enhances his sense of self, learns to assess and esteem himself and his personal role inside a group, and develops the courage to take action.
Social competence: Sound self-assessment leads to a just perception of the other group members. The child perceives the others as individuals in their own right, learns to value each of them individually, works as part of a team, develops a we-consciousness.
Affective competence: In daily contact with others, the child learns to express feelings and to recognise conflicts and problems, and also comes to know the routes that may lead to the solution of a problem.
Motor competence: Physical movement during the learning process is a fundamental childhood need, enhances receptiveness, and fosters the child’s motor development.
Cognitive competence: The foreign language becomes a medium of communication, less of an end in itself. Foreign language content items prompt reflective thought and enhance memory performance. This competence develops at earliest when a child has reached the age of about ten.
Creative competence: Unfamiliar sounds and symbols, and new and unaccustomed content, arouse pleasure, stimulate curiosity, open up new ideas, and prompt the child to test out new approaches.
The competence of close attention: new influences sensitise the child to our immediate surroundings, to our environment, to the needs and necessities to which other human beings are subject. The competence of close attention leads to due recognition and respect, and also to trust.

Reader competence is not the same as reading competence. Development of reader competence should begin in the parental home, long before the conscious acquisition of reading skills. Listening to fairy-tales and other stories read aloud, and joining in the ‘reading’ and discussion of picture-books are activities that initiate children into the culture of reading and writing, foster their pleasure and interest in reading, and prepare them for future independent reading.

The richer a child’s surroundings in written material, the easier it will be for him or her to recognise the usefulness of any such material. It is thus good practice to have written culture featuring consistently in the surroundings from an early stage, e.g. in the nursery school.

These processes can be initiated in early foreign language learning and developed over time. When shorter pieces are being read aloud, follow-up should not be concerned with content aspects alone: the children should be encouraged to develop a feel for e.g. tension-generating features or the distinctive characteristics of different text-types (‘Once upon a time …’).

It helps to smooth the path for children entering the early foreign language learning process if individuals in the immediate environment,

e.g. parents or older siblings, are readers and in that respect role models, and also if:
the child has easy access to a wide range of reading material
books for reading aloud and for personal discovery are available
the learning environment – e.g. pre-school and primary school – offers reading and writing corners
adults are receptive to children’s questions and in this way assist the learning-to-read process.

Recommendations:

Before children look in any detail at the written form of a foreign language, they should be familiar with the written form of their mother tongue.
The child’s everyday environment should provide as many ways of accessing written material as possible, so as to stimulate curiosity at an early age about books (etc.) and general interest in reading.

Source Information
^[1] Cf. e.g. Zarate (1997), Krumm (2003), House (2008)

Nuremberg Recommendations
Objective: the interculturally aware child

Recommendations:

Further Information

Basic conditions

Learning environment of children

Situation and Perspectives

Bibliography

Nuremberg Recommendations Objective: the interculturally aware child

Recommendations:

General Competences

Foreign language competences

Intercultural Competence

Learning strategy competences

Reader competence

Further Information

Basic conditions

Learning environment of children

Situation and Perspectives

Bibliography

Nuremberg Recommendations
Objective: the interculturally aware child