What is the purpose of a Group 2 Language Acquisition course? This question is on my mind at present because I am a member of an IB working party tasked with brain-storming ideas about the design and direction of the new Group 2 Subject Guides which are planned to appear in around 2027 or 2028. This working party is ably led by Darlyne Delaney, Curriculum Manager for DP Language Acquisition, and we are currently trying to summarise conclusions from the first wave of meetings.

So, what should a Language Acquisition course actually do? Here are my own ideas about what has emerged from the discussions – purely personal, and not official, of course.

To start with, Group 2 subjects (both Language B and Ab Initio) should address the nature of Language in general as well as teach the mechanisms of each individual language – i.e. the fundamental role that Language has in forming all human life. This is, or should be, what distinguishes Group 2, since the prime focus of Group 1 is ‘Literature’, in which the study of language is specific and particular to the means by which each author creates their works – it is not primarily about the overall impact of Language on Culture and Society.

Accordingly, an effective Language Acquisition course should address large-scale Concepts about the role that Language, any language, has on human life. The current suggestion is that these Concepts should be Culture, Communication and Perspectives. In other words:

• Culture - how language forms, and is formed by, culture at all levels
• Communication - how language enables (or hampers) effective communication of all sorts of ideas, thus making ‘society’ or ‘culture’ possible
• Perspectives - how language defines or expresses or obscures differing points of view

These three big Concepts would replace the current Conceptual Understandings (which would however re-appear in relation to language handling skills) as required elements of the programme. They should be studied in general theoretical terms, as ‘transferable knowledge’, but should also be studied by application to the broad subject areas currently know as ‘Themes’ (Identities, Experiences, Human ingenuity, Social organisation, Sharing the planet). There should be a dialogue between the general ideas of the Concepts, and the specific, particular examples of real-life contexts under the Themes. To put it another way, one would not be studying ‘Human ingenuity’ just for its own sake, but rather as a case-study of how language may influence human life.

Now, the Concepts/Themes symbiosis would be just one of three components of an ideal programme. The Concepts/Themes could be seen as ‘content-based’ (i.e. new knowledge and understanding explicitly taught); the other two components would be ‘skills-based’ – ‘Idea-handling skills’ and ‘Language-handling skills’. To be more specific:

• Idea-handling skills – involving critical thinking, digital literacy, methodical and disciplined approaches, and so on
• Language-handling skills – choice of phrasing and structure, appropriacy, clarity, accuracy…and all the other aspects of effective language control

These skills components may have to be explicitly taught, as required by student needs, and would then be practised by applying them to the study of the Concepts/Themes component.

What has become overwhelmingly clear to me while trying to work out an overall scheme or theoretical structure for such a Language Acquisition course is that everything overlaps ! You can identify an individual element under ‘Idea-handling skills’, e.g. ‘critical thinking’ (and there’s plenty of argument about what that actually means!) … but then realise that you can only use critical thinking effectively if you have certain ‘Language-handling skills’ … and you then have the problem of having to develop understanding of the ‘Concepts/Themes’ element before you can apply critical thinking appropriately and effectively … but in order to develop understanding you need critical thinking. So there we are !

Actually, this tangle of overlapping challenges does not seem to me to be a problem, but rather an opportunity. There is an excellent teaching dynamic here – whenever a student discovers a lack of skill, you provide it … and whenever something new has been learnt, there is plenty of opportunity to apply and practise it.

Finally, there is a whole dimension of language acquisition which remains unresolved in this sketch-plan of a possible Language Acquisition programme – what has been called ‘socio-emotional competence’. This would cover a range of aspects of ‘attitude’ – empathy, sensitivity, respect, open-mindedness, and so on. Are these social skills (and so, teachable) or are they personal qualities (and so, inherent and not teachable)? There is division of opinion about this – such competences could be placed as a fourth component of the overall structure, called ‘socio-linguistic skills’… but would this be overloading the programme? Or are these competences already taught by any good language teacher anyway?

I repeat that all of the above ideas are my personal understandings extracted from our long and rambling discussions. All of this is very much work in progress – we are still a long way away from any clear decisions on any of this – but I do think that the issues raised here are of relevance to the skilful teaching of a language, whatever the current official syllabus.