Read the information given and express your point of view on the problem.

Bruno della Chiesa is a senior analyst at the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In 2007, he began a new project, Globalisation and Linguistic Competencies, to explore the reasons why students in some schools and countries are more likely to better learn new languages. Della Chiesa is fluent in French, English, German, and Spanish. Recently, he spoke with Harvard Education Letter editor Nancy Walser about non-native language learning.
Why is it important for students, especially native English speakers, to learn another language?
It’s important for many reasons. To be able to communicate with people who don’t speak your mother tongue (as a tourist or in international professional activities) and to increase your competitiveness in the labor market—these are the best-known reasons, and the most obvious ones. And recent work has shown that in terms of cognitive capacities, the “collateral benefits” of becoming bi- or plurilingual are not to be neglected. Moreover, there is also the crucial benefit of developing a sense of diversity in unity that you

can’t possibly access that well with any other exercise.
When you start to develop a fluency in a second or third language, you suddenly become aware of the diversity of how people think. An example from France is the word communauté. It means “community” in English, and in the States it has a positive connotation. In France, it’s exactly the opposite; it has a very negative meaning at societal and political levels that comes from the French Revolution. As a French citizen, you are supposed to consider yourself a French citizen first rather than a member of a smaller group, especially when “rules of conduct” between groups one belongs to collide.
At some stage when students are learning a language, they realize that people who speak in another language also tend to think somewhat differently—and that they have a different doxa. First they see the differences. However, there are also universals and commonalities, and this is equally important, if not more. Every language has a way to express the past, present, and future and a way to express happiness and sorrow, for example. So learning another language is also about developing an awareness of diversity and unity—you learn a bit better who you are, what cultural doxa underlies your language group, and also what it means to be a human being. http://hepg.org/hel/article/514

A Conference.

1 INTRO: A Conference

2 TASK/PROCESS: Divide into several groups:

1. Group A: You organize the conference on the theme ‘The Foreign Language Teacher and the Trinity of Languages in Professional Training of the Foreign Language Teachers of the Next Generation’, think over the names of the sections, create a leaflet to inform the people about the conference, write about the requirements to the articles, collect the articles, organize the conference, edit the booklet of articles;
2. Group B: You represent the Republic of Kazakhstan. You want to participate in the scientific conference. Choose the section, write your article, present it at the conference;
3. Group C: You represent the foreign countries, organizations. You want to participate in the scientific conference. Choose the section, write your article, present it at the conference;

3 RESULTS/EVALUATION: Analyse the results of the conference, write a report on the conference outcome (300-350 words).

A Discussion

1 INTRO: A Discussion

2 TASK/PROCESS: Choose any form of the performance, prepare and discuss the following topic: ‘Plurilingualism and the Foreign Language Teacher: Problems and Solutions’.

3 RESULT/EVALUATION: Analyse the results of the discussion and prepare a report (300-350 words) on it.

A Role Play

1 INTRO: A Role Play

2 TASK/PROCESS: Think of the situation in the context of the topic ‘The Problems of the Society Deman for the Foreign Language Teacher Profession in the Job Market’, distribute the roles and role play the situation (e.g. Minister of education, school teacher, representatives of other professions, experts, etc.).

3 RESULT/EVALUATION: Analyse the results of the discussion and prepare a report (300-350 words) on it.

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