Page 13 - VII Congreso Internacional Sobre Educación Bilingüe

Language Learning and Bilingual Education from
a Diachronic Perspective: Three Historical Miniatures
Leonor María Martínez Serrano University of Córdoba (Spain) leonor.martinez.serrano@uco.es
Abstract
In an increasingly globalised world, education systems are trying to implement effective dual-focused approaches that provide students with high-quality language and content learning. Nihil novum sub sole. Bilingual education and language learning are as old as humanity. A diachronic approach to the study of how humankind has gone about learning and using languages to learn different academic disciplines reveals that a sui generis proto-CLIL was cultivated in Roman schools where Greek was used as a language of instruction in the 1st century CE. Stoic philosopher L. A. Seneca’s experience as a language learner is a case in point. As a child, he was taken to Rome by his father to receive a humanistic education where languages played a role of paramount importance. Centuries later, in Renaissance Europe, talented humanists such as Erasmus of Rotterdam learnt languages to expand their knowledge in disciplines that opened up new vistas to new territories. In the twentieth century, an abundance of examples show that language learning and bilingual education were signs of a well-rounded education amongst intellectuals and men of letters. American poet Ezra Pound taught his daughter, Mary de Rachewiltz, classical and modern languages to instill in her the sense that not everything that is worth reading is written in a single tongue. The methods he used to teach her German and classical Greek are expressive of the cosmopolitanism that pervaded his thinking and his conception of literary tradition, whilst they anticipate our current views of the communicative approach, CLIL teaching, and translanguaging.
Keywords: bilingual education, language learning, proto-CLIL, translanguaging 11