Transcript Norway – a case study Strasbourg, 16 October 2006 The language context Norway – a multilingual country • Two varieties of written Norwegian •

Norway – a case study
Strasbourg, 16 October 2006
The language context
Norway – a multilingual country
• Two varieties of written Norwegian
• Acceptance of spoken dialects
• Saami
• Kven/Finnish, Roma/Romani
• Mother tongues of recent immigrants
• English from Year 1
• A second foreign language optional from
Year 8
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Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research
2006 – Knowledge Promotion - A literacy
reform
• New curricula for all subjects, with clear
competence aims
• Basic skills to be strengthened through
competence aims for oral, reading, writing,
mathematics and digital skills across the
curriculum
• Reading and writing emphasized from Year 1
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Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research
Norwegian as a Subject
The objective:
(…) A major aim for the teaching of Norwegian
throughout the 13 years of schooling is
linguistic confidence and belief in one’s own
culture as the basis of developing identity,
respect for other cultures, active social
participation and lifelong learning.
Four main subject areas:
Oral texts, Written texts, Multi-modal texts,
Language and culture
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Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research
Basic skills across the curriculum
• Being able to express oneself orally and in
writing, to read, to do mathematics, to use
digital tools
• Examples:
History, year 7: ”Prepare visual presentations
of two or more river cultures using digital
tools.”
English, year 10: ”Describe and interpret
graphic representations of statistics and other
data.”
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Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research
Competence aims
Some examples:
• Discuss characters and plots in fairytales and
stories (Oral texts, after Year 2)
• Discuss some esthetic techniques in multimodal texts (Multi-modal texts, after Year 4)
• Use personal reading experiences/responses
when writing fiction and factual texts (Written
texts, after Year 7)
• Present results of in-depth studies of three
selected topics: an author, a literary theme
and a language topic (Language and culture,
after Year 10)
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Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research
Literature
• Interpret and reflect upon content, form and
purpose in a representative selection of
contemporary texts, fiction and factual prose
in the first-choice and second-choice
Norwegian languages and in translation from
the Saami language (Written texts, after First
year of upper secondary education)
• Explain how literature and other art
expressions in and outside Norway have
influenced each other during recent centuries
(Literature and culture, after Second year of
upper secondary education)
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Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research
Norwegian as a Subject - Assessment
• Informal assessment between Years 1 – 7
• Written examinations (national) and oral
examinations (local) and grades after lower
and upper secondary education
• All the competence aims in the curriculum
may be tested
• From 2007 full-scale national survey of
reading skills in English and Norwegian after
Years 5 and 8
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Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research
Convergence
Norwegian – English
• Explore and discuss how digital media
influence and change language and
communication (Exploring language and Text
– English and Norwegian)
• Read and present fiction and factual texts of
your choice (Text and meaning – English and
Norwegian)
• Select and comment on media
headlines/texts and present your own texts in
different media (Text and meaning – English
and Norwegian (bold types))
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Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research
The next step
• A White Paper on language policy and
language education to be presented to
Parliament spring 2007
• A broad discussion of all Languages of School
Education
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Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research