Language Policy
Why are languages so important?
A resource to use with staff when writing or reviewing your Language Policy.
Compulsory language learning is one of the distinctive elements of IB programmes. Why does the IB place such importance on the learning of languages?
This page is both a discussion document and prompt for writing/reviewing your Language Policy.
For a more detailed inquiry about multilingualism refer to Multilingualism.
What does it mean for the IB to say that 'every teacher is a language teacher'?
This is a very helpful infographic to introduce key terms. It also provides some strategies for teachers in the classroom. Click HERE.
Key issues to consider
- School language profile: How does your policy relate to your school language profile? What are students’ language histories? Which students are monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual? How many languages are actually in use on a regular basis within the school? How might you work with students to map the school language profile?
- Philosophy about language: What is the school's philosophy about language, its use and development? Is your language philosophy informed through wide reading of IB published documents (see sources of information below)? Does the school language philosophy reflect the interests of the whole school community? Does the policy outline how students are to learn at least one language in addition to their home/personal language(s)?
- Multilingulism: Does the policy ensure support for multilingualism, which is required to support multiliteracies? What opportunities can the school community develop to promote multilingualism/ language learning to support/ as a way of supporting intercultural understanding? How explicit is the fact that language is central to the study of all disciplines made in curriculum documents? How successfully is this implemented in all subject areas?
- Identifying linguistic abilities: What mechanisms are established for gathering data on students' and families' linguistic abilities and backgrounds? How does the school identify the language needs of students? Is the school attentive to and inclusive of various language backgrounds? Are the additional language learning and home language learning needs of students addressed adequately?
- Language and identity: What opportunities are students given to explore the centrality of language in exploring, knowing, and expressing their identities? How does the school promote an affirmative model of identity to ensure that all students are visible and valued? In what ways does the school empower students to identify and shape relevant opportunities for enhancing their linguistic and cultural skills, providing them with a sense of voice, choice, and ownership? How does the school establish and maintain connections with families and the broader community to foster environments that appreciate and cultivate students' linguistic and cultural abilities?
Translanguaging is an instructional method that incorporates multiple languages during classroom sessions. Within these learning environments, a mix of English and diverse home languages creates a vibrant and inclusive atmosphere, fostering a sense of community for students with varying linguistic backgrounds.
- International mindedness: How are students made aware of how their interaction with people from other backgrounds helps them to be more ethical and make open-minded decisions? How tolerant and open are students to variation in language use? In what ways can the school community better investigate and commemorate linguistic differences and diversity? How does the school enable students to learn of their host country or regional language and culture?
- We are all language teachers: How do your teachers demonstrate an understanding that they are all, in practice, language teachers with responsibilities in facilitating communication? What support does the school provide the teachers in developing language? How do you raise awareness with subject teachers on identification on any learning difficulties that may arise because of language?
- Language in the curriculum: Are the languages of teaching and learning clearly identified? Are the languages of communication used in the school and outside of the classroom identified? Which languages are offered and at what levels? Note that in IB World Schools a language policy should enable a student’s language profile to be developed by providing for school-supported self-taught options in group 1 and opportunities for learning languages ab initio and languages B.
- Assessment: In what ways do teachers utilize information about students' linguistic abilities to establish assessment methods that are just, encompassing, and clear? What assessment techniques are implemented to guarantee that assessments are inclusive and accommodating of the diverse linguistic backgrounds of students? How do teachers employ methods and techniques to design assessments that are both diverse and genuine, acknowledging the contextual aspect of language acquisition? To what extent is feedback tailored to ensure comprehension for every student? What training does the school offer to equip teachers in delivering clear, meaningful, and accessible feedback to students?
- Home languages: What is the school's position on (a) the active development of the home languages for all learners, and (b) the teaching of home languages, different from the language of instruction? Have you considered alternative methods for developing and maintaining home languages (e.g., well-resourced special request and school-supported self-taught options)? Does the school review the processes used to identify the language needs of each student? Are there rules and expectations about language use around the school?
- Review of policy: How was the policy written (as a community and collaboratively?) and how is it reviewed? Does your policy include evidence of a review process such as the date of the most recent review? Ensure links to other key documents such as admissions, assessment and special educational needs policies.
Appendix 1 of the Guide to evaluation (2022) contains a very helpful list of expectations. You can find this document on the Programme Resource Centre (PRC)
Top tips from IB educators across the world
A misconception about school-based policies is that they must be long and detailed. The most powerful school-based policies can begin as one phrase or a policy statement, such as: “Multilingualism is a fact, a right and a resource for learning” (PSP 0301-04-0200). Such a statement can form the basis for an effective language policy when they are paired with achievable actions and are evidenced throughout the school community. — (Policy into practice)
You may like to consider the following:
- Audit the language profiles of the students in the school. Use Multilingual-Mindedness Evaluation Tool from Lorna Caputo to measure the starting point. Discuss results with all teachers identifying ideas for improvement
- I am a language teacher: The starting point is the acknowledgement that every teacher is a language teacher.
- Support teachers in their delivery of instruction: sometimes teachers feel safer communicating in their home language, whilst students need the language of instruction.
- Provide teachers with opportunities for professional development to enhance their own language proficiencies.
- Observe teachers and provide constructive feedback, materials, planning time and staff development opportunities.
- Integrate appropriate technology that enhances language development by ongoing language departmental meetings.
- Use a pedagogical approach that enhances language development.
- Select resources that are linguistically accessible and culturally inclusive.
- Giving value to the mother tongue as a language and appreciating the value of own language. Acceptance of mother language is also one of the traits of international mindedness.
- Review the policy on a regular basis, always involving multiple stakeholders, to strengthen the feeling that it is a whole school community effort.
I am grateful to Jesse Antuma (MYP and DP coordinator at City High Middle School in Grand Rapids, MI USA) for showing what the language policy can look like in practice:
Policy: Language Policy
Tag Line: “Language is Life”
Looks like:
Reading, writing, speaking, listening, understanding
Interaction and personal reflection
Cultural exploration
Sounds like:
“Go for it! Give it a try!”
Dialogue and laughter
Loud conversations and quiet reflection
“Nice to meet you.”
Feels like:
Challenge and joy.
Confidence and creativity.
The world is a big place, but I’m up for an adventure.
Describe:
10th grade lesson observation through my office door. Language = Spanish
The assessment portion of this lesson was a live skit in which students in groups of 3-5 enact a real-life situation--in this case, ordering food from a server at a restaurant--that required them to use a recent vocabulary list learned in class. I observed, through my open office door, students preparing in the hallway. It looked like speaking, listening, shaky hands, hidden smiles behind masks, excited interactions. It sounded like laughter, incorrect verb tenses with quick corrections, “por favor” y “muchisimas gracias” y “Me gustaria diez hamburguesas”. It felt like fun.
Kate Sorrell, MYP coordinator, American International School of Bucharest has kindly shared this section of their languag policy.
Our philosophy statement: AISB believes that language is an essential and undeniable part of a person’s identity. Language, culture and identity are inextricably linked and so it is important that all languages of the learning community are valued in the school. Through language, students develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes that allow them to embody the IB Learner Profile and gain intercultural awareness and respect. Learning language, learning about language and learning through language are all necessary to fully appreciate and understand how language works in order to harness the full power of our multilingual identity.
Roles of the School Community
Role of students
It is the role of the student to:
- Be a responsible, mindful, and inclusive communicator in every language.
- Be actively engaged in meaning making
- Use language as an inclusive communication tool
Role of parents
It is the role of the parents to:
- Ensure the maintenance and enrichment of home languages by continuing to speak, read and write the language at home.
- Take advantage of home language instructional opportunities provided either by the school or in the outside community.
- For Romanian Parents: attend a required information session if choosing to opt out of Romanian home language.
- Encourage their children to read outside the school in either English as the shared language or the home language to help them to extend their academic language and concepts.
- Stay informed about current school language practices by attending workshops, reading newsletters, and conversing with faculty.
Role of faculty
- Recognize that language learning is not a separate discipline, cannot be isolated from all other learning and take this into account when planning lessons.
- Understand that students who are following an IB programme in a language other than their home language cannot always be assumed to have the awareness of the relevant linguistic genres for that subject and therefore need to be explicitly taught.
- Acknowledge different levels of language skills and plan their lessons accordingly.
- Be aware of issues related to language learning and committed to developing their knowledge as language instructors through professional development opportunities provided by the school.
- Understand that new learning and understanding is built on previous experience and conceptual understandings in a developmental continuum.
- Ensure that input of new knowledge is comprehensible and to make use of specific strategies to help their students access the new information.
- Encourage learners to read extensively in English and their other languages to help them extend their academic language and concepts.
Role of school leadership
It is the role of administrators to:
- Ensure that policies and procedures regarding language acquisition are developed, implemented and regularly reviewed.
- Provide appropriate funding, facilities, leadership, resources, and professional development opportunities for the successful implementation of the language policy.
- Lead and oversee the implementation and revision of the Language Policy and curriculum.
Support faculty in their delivery of language instruction. - Promote communication with parents concerning students’ language development and provide translators when needed.
Points of reflection
- Why do you think language learning is important?
- Why is it central to learning in International Baccalaureate programmes?
- “You can’t completely understanding a culture without speaking the language.” Discuss.
“It is mankind’s discovery of language which more than any other single thing has separated him from animal creation. Without language what kind of thought is possible? Without language, what concept have we of the past or future as separated from the immediate present? Without language, how can we tell anyone what we feel or what we think? It might be said, that until he developed language man had no soul, for without language how could he reach deep inside himself and discover the truths that are hidden there, or find out what emotions he shared or did not share with his fellow men or women?” (Davies, R., Happy Alchemy, 1998).
“The ability to communicate in a variety of modes in more than one language is essential to the International Baccalaureate (IB) concept of an international education that promotes intercultural perspectives.” (Language and learning in IB programmes, IB, 2011:1)
“A language is not just words. It's a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It's all embodied in a language.” - Noam Chomsky. I think the quotation from Noam Chomsky - which is adorned on our walls in school - expresses a lot about how language is both a historical expression and a force for social cohesion. This is very important for us to understand when we have a multitude of different mother tongue languages in the school and a rich mother tongue programme. (Robert Jennings)
- Encultures – it communicates society’s expectations and we develop our cultural identity through it. Wade Davis put it this way: language “archives the wisdom of a people” (ECIS Conference 2009). Note how with the birth of the nation state languages become associated with nationality and often accompanying ideology. Note the concept of ‘native speaker’ vs being ‘foreign’. Because of the link between language and culture the link is made between learning a language and developing intercultural awareness.
- Shapes our thinking – it plays an important role in the construction of meaning and knowledge. Consider the language of each academic discipline, and how language creates conceptual understanding.
- Develops critical thinking – which is important in the development of intercultural awareness. We live in a world where diversity has become a feature of everyday life. We become exposed to new ideas and alternative perspectives. By responding to these different perspectives we can engage in critical thinking. The Council of Europe “encourages students to critically reflect on their own responses and attitudes to the experiences of others.” (Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters, 2009:5)
“To learn another language is quite simply and profoundly one of the best ways of learning to recognise the world and to see how others and otherness inhabit it. It is an education in difference as a pathway to understanding how to contribute to … global citizenship.” (Michael Worton, 2010, quoted in Reisz,M. 21 October 2010. Sorry, non comprendo, I’m British, Times higher Education Supplement)
At Kuei Shan, language is seen as the primary vehicle for communication, the primary instrument for developing critical thinking, and as the primary apparatus used for enabling creativity. Furthermore, language is also seen as being pivotal to Kuei Shan students’ cognitive, social, and emotional development—playing an essential role in the process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the physical senses. (Caleb Lin, MYP Coordinator, Kuei Shan School,Taipei, Taiwan )
This video on the benefits of a bilingual brain is great to use with both students and staff to underline the importance of learning languages:
Some 21st century concerns
- Bilingualism – Multilingualism: From its beginnings in the 1960s the IB has advocated a positive attitude towards bilingualism. However, there was a weakness in this advocacy in that it was assumed that one of the languages would be the language of instruction (English, French, Spanish) and the second language (mother tongue included) would be chosen from a selected group. This Language A+B model was built into the Diploma Programme. The new DP language programmes have changed this so that Group 1 is studies in language and literature, and Group 2 language acquisition.
- ‘Using not having languages’: The 21st century world has moved the debate on. Globalization, demographic change (as people become a lot more mobile), the growth of pluralistic cultural integration (as opposed to assimilation) and the importance of inclusion have led to changes in the way we see languages. Governments around the world are not only recognizing the plurality of languages of their citizens but are also seeking ways to promote it. The emphasis is moving from stressing ‘having languages’ to being able to ‘use language’.
- Multilinguality: The concept of multilinguality has entered the dictionary to refer to “an individual store of languages at any level of proficiency, including partial competence and incomplete fluency” (O’Laoire and Aronin, Thinking of Multilinguality, 2006). As the IB paper says: “The new terms ‘languaging’ and ‘translanguaging’ capture the idea that learners develop and integrate new language practices into a very complex dynamic multilingual repertoire.” (Language and learning in IB programmes, IB, 2011:8). A multilingual view recognizes and values diversity in language profiles as the norm. It is a potential resource in curriculum planning for developing intercultural awareness and international mindedness.
- Valuing home languages: Equally it is important that an individual be encouraged to nurture and develop their mother tongue: “The education of the child shall be directed to … the development of respect for the child’s parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values…” (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNICEF, 1989, Article 29). The IB notes that “When the language one uses in daily communication is denigrated – for instance, not deemed fit to be used as a language of instruction – a child may feel that a part of him or herself is also being denigrated.” (Language and learning in IB programmes, IB, 2011:12).
Discussion Questions
To what extent does this teacher's approach align with IB philosophy?
- “Isolating English as a Second Language (ESL) students from the mainstream, in an attempt to teach them the language they need separately from the subject areas, is not a practice that honours multilingualism.” (Language and learning in IB programmes, IB, 2011:13). So how do you meet the linguistic needs of the students?
- How do you use mother tongue languages within your school to support student learning? Do you have a mother-tongue programme for ALL students? Consider the following: “A growing body of research shows that sustained efforts to create environments that include activities, artefacts, and practices that constantly and explicitly valorise the first languages of learners in multicultural settings outside as well as inside schools are key to learner and programme success.”(Suarez-Orozoco et al, in Hornberger and McKay, Sociolinguistics and Language Education, 2010).
- How do you welcome and embrace the diversity of languages? How do you use the diversity of languages to enhance learning?
- To what extent does your school's philosophy and approach to languages align with the IB's approach to multilingualism?
- To what extent are students in your school affirmed or not in regards to the schools' approach to languages? How do you know?
Thought piece: Language and Learning in IB Programmes
If you wish a reflective activity in preparation for staff compiling or reviewing your Language Policy use Language and learning in IB programmes, IB, 2011 as a think piece.
- Assign individuals / pairs to read different sections of the document:
Multilingualism as a fact page 10
Multilingualism as a right page 11
Multilingualism as a resource page 12
Lingua francas and world Englishes page 13
A continuum of language and learning domains pages 21-26
The roles of language page 27 - Use the Visible Thinking Routine ‘Connect-extend-challenge’ to allow a focused read of these pages
Connect: How are the ideas and information presented connected to what you already know?
Extend – What new ideas did you get that extended or broadened your thinking in new directions?
Challenge – What challenges or puzzles have come to mind from the ideas presented?
Quick Facts
IB working languages = English, French, Spanish
Students need to study one group 1 and a group 2 subject OR two group 1 subjects.
Group 1 – studies in language and literature available to be taken in over 50 languages. Students can also make a request for examination in their best (mother tongue) language. IB also offers a school-supported self-taught course which means that even if a school cannot provide a teacher in the language a carefully planned self-taught course can be followed.
Group 2 – language acquisition (in two forms: one for students with some experience of the language and the second as language ab initio, for students with little or no experience of the target language). This course also involves the recognition and understanding of another culture.
A third language (from either group 1 or 2) can be studied instead of a group 6 subject.
Bilingual Diplomas: are awarded provided certain conditions are met (see Handbook of procedures for the Diploma Programme).
Sources of information
IB Website
- Click here to access the IB webpage on Language Policy
Documents
- The IB have published a Language Policy document on their website. It provides information on the International Baccalaureate’s support for languages, language courses and languages of instruction.
- Language policy: Information on the International Baccalaureate's support for languages, language courses and languages of instruction, February 2014.
- Access the IB Guidelines for developing a school language policy.
- Access the IB document Learning in a language other than mother tongue in IB programmes
- Access the IB Language and Learning in IB programmes. This is a very helpful document which discusses the various roles language plays in learning, a brief history of how the conceptualization of language is changing, a discussion on the emergent paradigm of multilingualism and an outline of a pedagogy for the development of multilingualism.
The International School of London (ISL): A personalized, contextualized and flexible multilingual language programme
Alameda International Jr./Sr. High School in Lakewood, Colorado: Relevance and authenticity in language development
Berit Braun, IB Alumni, When do you speak a language?
Susan Stewart, What are the most influential ideas on language learning at present?
PS: Bilingual Education
This is a whole subject in itself. If you are interested a good article appears in the first Magazine of Keystone Academy, Beijing, a school dedicated to bilingual immersion. Click here to access The Keystone Magazine, and turn to pages 15-19.