Who teaches the language to learn?

Abstract

We often hear about students who are claimed to have learning difficulties because they cannot read or write. However, reading and writing, as well as listening and speaking, or in other words “knowing language” is not a general ability someone masters or does not. In these pages we want to demonstrate that in order to learn to speak, to listen to, to interact orally or through the written medium, students must have access to these communicative skills from all content areas. This is so because there does not exist such a thing as a general mastery of the language: all linguistic abilities must be activated through a wide variety of tasks, domains and text genres within each content area. We all accept that all teachers are language teachers, but it is necessary to have this viewpoint influence all teaching practices. Only if we manage to do so, we will be able to help our students learn to learn and to become conscious and critical citizens, which is the ultimate goal of the teaching-learning process as the Delors report suggests.