The ethos of the "Language for work" project

The "Language for work" (LfW) project is built on two fundamental ideas: that diversity is a key resource and that cooperation is a powerful motor for progress. 
European realities are diverse in many ways, including the nature of work-related language learning, the way work is organised, the structure of the labour market and approaches to learning, especially with regard to migration issues.
Different approaches and practices to support language learning have been developed across Europe in response to such different realities. LfW considers this diversity a resource, since it reveals a range of possible solutions to the challenges of supporting work-related L2 development by migrants and ethnic communities. LfW does not consider these solutions as examples to be “copied” and transferred to other contexts, but as a source of inspiration. Experience proves that such practice examples can trigger new local solutions and create innovation.
Cooperation among different actors in the field has also proved to be a crucial factor in the full exploitation of the potential benefits offered by difference and diversity. The LfW Network embraces a large choice of possible partners and supports dialogue between and among researchers and practitioners, professionals across countries, languages, disciplines and sectors (from language for social care to language for the processing industry).

Our understanding of language and communication

1. Regarding language and communication

Language is more than a formal system of grammar and lexis to be learnt in the classroom. It is an instrument to construct social realities; this includes vocational/work-related knowledge and know-how. Language use is interpersonal and is thus shaped by social norms and power relationships. Negotiation of meaning is bilateral and depends on more than just linguistic form. In any act of communication, those involved have a shared responsibility for mutual understanding. In the context of work, this includes employers and colleagues as well as labour market administrative entities and trade unions.

2. Regarding work-related language skills

Work-related language skills are the skills people need to find suitable employment, to contribute positively as employees, to progress at work and to learn and develop. Typically, these skills are context-specific and constantly evolving. They reflect not only the various communicative requirements of particular fields of work and different roles within them, but also social norms related to work, both generally and in specific settings.

3. Regarding language learning

Language learning is the process through which a learner acquires communicative ability in the target language. This process occurs over a period of time, and in a variety of ways, of which the most important is interaction in the language. The process takes place within the learner and in constant interaction with his/her environment. Moreover, it is embedded in social contexts, which, in turn have an impact on success in learning.

Learning can be supported in a variety of ways − as the LfW collection of practices show − including formal, non-formal and informal learning arrangements. 

Support for work-related L2 learning by migrants seeking employment or in employment is most likely to be effective when it is based on a realistic understanding on how adults learn, what their needs and the needs of the working environment are. As to work-related L2 development, there are many opportunities for different actors (including employers and colleagues at work) to support learners in different ways, as the LfW collection of practices show. 

4. Regarding support for work-related language learning

Support is most likely to be effective when it combines expertise in language learning with an understanding of work requirements. In practice (and unsurprisingly, given the range of work requirements), this combination of expertise is rarely combined in a single individual or organisation. Consequently, collaboration among actors from different fields, such as language instruction, vocational education and training, labour market support, and the workplace itself, is likely to be required. The quality of support has an impact on the quality of learning as well as the quality of work.

5. Regarding the role of L2 teachers and providers

L2 teachers and providers typically bring expertise in language teaching in formal settings. Sometimes they also bring expertise in other forms of support for language learning like mentoring and/or coaching. They may also bring expertise in specific vocational fields, though this is less common.

To provide effective support for work-related language learning, expertise in the relevant vocational field is a pre-requisite. This is likely to require L2 teachers and providers to cooperate closely with employers, job centres, trade unions, centres of vocational education and training, and so on. The skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary for cooperation of this kind therefore become an important part of the skills required by L2 teachers and providers.

6. Regarding challenges and competences of L2 teachers and providers

Recent research has brought about a paradigm change in understanding language, language acquisition (Ortega 2009; Ellis 2008) and learning in general (Illeris 2011; Felstead et al. 2011), putting increased emphasis on social aspects. In an ecological perspective, language is not a static, abstract and limited system nor a product, but a meaning-creating process between interacting individuals in concrete situations across time and space (van Lier 2010).

Such conceptualisations of language and learning challenge the traditional role of practitioners and demand new competences. While language norms and systems (phonology, morphology, semantic and syntax) can be taught and learnt in the classroom, language use needs to be investigated and supported “in the wild” (http://languagelearninginthewild.com/), in our case in workplaces and vocational education and training (VET) sites.

Teachers and providers, experienced in teaching language norms and systems, may well lack familiarity with work-related language and communicative practices. Socialised as learners and professionals within the social system of “education”, they may have limited acquaintance with the various other functional systems in which modern societies are differentiated, such as “politics”, “the corporate world/business”. The ways of functioning, the aims and goals, priorities, requirements and procedures of the world of work may be unfamiliar to them even with regard to language.

In order to offer customized L2 learning arrangements, teachers and providers have to find out what the requirements and the needs of learners and the corporate world are. For this purpose, they have to step into the “wild” and explore a “foreign culture”, as ethnographers do.

7. Regarding the use of ethnography and ethnographic methods

Linguistic research makes more and more use of ethnographic methods with different foci, as recent work-related L2 studies show. These may explore the language and communication needs of employees and employers (Grünhage-Monetti 2009), new current workplace trends and how language trainers adapt to them (Portefin 2012), opportunities for interaction and language learning at work placements for adult learners (Sandwall 2013), language and communication requirements in initial vocational training (Settelmeyer 2017), the challenges met by apprentices, when sharing meaning and (re)negotiating participation at work with expert co-workers who train them (Filliettaz 2018), etc..

In the field of practice, a growing number of projects draw on ethnographic methods like ‘Deutsch am Arbeitsplatz in der Kartoffelmanufaktur Pahmeyer’ (Thomas 2017) or the Erasmus+ project ‘Communication competences for migrants and disadvantaged background learners in bilingual work environments’ (COMBI) (https://combiproject.eu/).

Ethnography is a qualitative research method. It was originally developed by anthropologists but is applicable to other disciplines. Ethnography is the in-depth study of a culture or a facet of a culture. Its goal is to understand a practice or set of practices within a culture, to grasp the “point of view [of the investigated person or group], his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world” (Malinowski, Dutton 1961 edition: 25).

In the field of work-related L2, company ethnography offers teachers and providers a set of methods to identify the language and communication requirements of the workplace in question, the social norms around it, the expectations of the actors involved, and the ways work-related knowledge is constructed. It has proven to be a valid instrument to design support than meets the needs of learners and of employers and other company actors (Thomas 2017).

Work-related L2 ethnographic data come from interviews with workers and key actors in workplace and education, focus groups, surveys, collection and analysis of work-related documents or oral interactions, photos, video documentations, etc. The key data collection technique is observation, which enables the practitioner-researcher to understand how the target group in question interacts with the other members of the community of practice, with artefacts, media and the challenges they face.

According to the involvement of the researcher/observer there are four types of observational research (https://measuringu.com/observation-role): they range from detached observation with no participation of the observer (complete observer), observer as participant, participant as observer to complete immersion in the environment (complete participant) (Gold 1958).

Practitioners will find practical instruments in the LfW resource bank and in the COMBI Toolkit.

Literature on ethnography

Cambra Gine M. (2003), Une approche ethnographique de la classe de langue, Didier, Paris.

Géraud M.-O., Leservoisier O. et Pottier R. (1998), Les notions clés de l’ethnologie. Armand Colin, Paris.

Gold R. L. (1958), Roles in sociological field observation, in Social Forces, Vol. 36, No. 3 (March 1958), pp. 217-223, Oxford University Press, Oxford, DOI: 10.2307/2573808, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/2573808.

Gumperz J. and Hymes D. (1964), The ethnography of communication, American Anthropologist, Special Publication, American Anthropological Association, Washington DC.

Hammersley, M. (1992), What’s wrong with ethnography?, Routledge, London.

Hymes D. (1974), Foundations in sociolinguistics. An ethnographic approach, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

Merriam S. (2009), Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation, Jossey-Bass & Sons, San Fransisco.

Malinowski B. (1922), Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London (Enhanced Edition reissued Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2013).

Wenger E. (2000), Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity, Cambridge University Press, New York.

Walsh D. (2004), Doing ethnography, in Seale C., Researching society and culture, Sage, London, pp. 225-238.

Winkin Y. (2001), Anthropologie de la communication. De la théorie au terrain, De Boeck Université /Éditions du Seuil, Paris.

References

Communication competences for migrants and disadvantaged background learners in bilingual work environments’ (COMBI), available at https://combiproject.eu/.

Felstead A., Fuller A., Jewson N., Unwin L. (2011), Praxis No. 7. Working to learn, learning to work, UK Commission for Employment and Skills, London, available at www.ukces.org.uk/assets/ukces/docs/publications/praxis-7-working-to-learn-learning-to-work.pdf.

Filliettaz L. (2018), Esigenze linguistiche dell’apprendimento sul posto di lavoro: potere e incomprensioni nelle interazioni di formazione professionale, in Braddell A., Grünhage-Monetti M., Lingua e lavoro, Loescher, Torino, pp. 94-107.

Grünhage-Monetti M. (2009), Learning needs of migrant workers in Germany, in Workplace Learning and Skills Bulletin, Issue 7, Simon Boyd Publishing, Cambridge, pp. 17-18.

Illeris K, (2011), The fundamentals of workplace learning, Routledge, London.

Portefin C. (2012), Adaptation des formateurs en milieu professionnel dans un environnement en mutation, in LIDIL, 45/2019, ELLUG, Grenoble, pp. 27-49, available at http:// lidil.revues.org/3176 and https://languageforwork.ecml.at/Portals/48/documents/lidil-adaptation-des-formateurs-en-milieu-professionnel-dans-un-environnement-en-mutation.pdf.

Sandwall K. (2013), Handling practice – Second language students’ opportunities for interaction and language learning at work placements. English abstract in the original publication in Swedish: Att hantera praktiken – Om sfi-studerandes möjligheter till interaktion och lärande på praktikplatser, available at https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/32029/2/gupea_2077_32029_2.pdf.

Settelmeyer A., Widera C., Schmitz S., Schneider K. (2017), Abschlussbericht 2.2.304 – Sprachlich-kommunikative Anforderungen in der beruflichen Ausbildung, Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung, Bonn, available at www2.bibb.de/bibbtools/de/ssl/dapro.php?proj=2.2.304

Tomas C. (2017), Deutsch am Arbeitsplatz in der Kartoffelmanufaktur Pahmeyer. Abschlussbericht 2017, IQ Netzwerk Nordrhein-Westfalen, Bielefeld, available at https://languageforwork.ecml.at/.....Pahmeyer.pdf.

van Lier L. (2010), Ecological-semiotic perspectives on educational linguistics, in Spolsky B. & Hult F. M. (eds.), The handbook of educational linguistics, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 96-605.