Challenges of the Knowledge Society (May 2018)
COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE IN ROMANIAN AND A MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN THE ROMANIAN PRIMARY EDUCATION CURRICULUM: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
Abstract
The communication competence is essential to any human activity or interaction and, consequently, it represents a priority for any educational activity. The Romanian National Curriculum is focused on developing key competences for lifelong learning (LLL), and, thus, the communication competence, which is circumscribed to the curricular area Language and Communication, is given paramount importance as it covers both Romanian (as mother tongue for most of the students) and one (two) modern foreign language(s). Our paper aims at analyzing the official curricular documents which regulate the development of the communication competence in primary school, both in Romanian and one modern foreign language (English in our case, as it statistically covers most of the Romanian student population), as, during this stage, the foundations for LLL key competences are being laid. By means of our analysis, we expect to point out to how similarities and/or differences in syllabi for Romanian and forthe modern foreign language,respectively, interact positively, and thus contribute to developing effective communication competence, or negatively, by following parallel paths, disregarding the supposedly common goal. The results of our documentary analysis are accompanied by qualitative research (interviews with practitioners at this level), so as to identify continuity/ lack of continuity between the objectives listed in the official documents and the teaching practice. Our conclusions point to the fact that, if methodological suggestions in the syllabi were followed and if both primary school teachers and foreign language teachers were aware of the similarities and differences between learning the mother language and a modern foreign language and explicitly or implicitly acted so that they raise their pupils’ awereness, then both communication competences could be successfully acquired.
