The development of environmental awareness through a proposal for promoting intercomprehension in romance languages among high school seniors

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the treatment of environmental issues in an educational proposal for Intercomprehension in Romance Languages (hereinafter called IC) developed by InterRom, a research team from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, in Argentina. This proposal, aimed at developing high school seniors’ language skills from the perspective of teaching and learning IC from text genres, integrates pluralistic approaches to languages with contributions from socio-discursive interactionism (BRONCKART, 2007), from the sociocultural theory of human development (BRUNER, 1994; NELSON, 1996; ROGOFF, 1993; VYGOTSKY, 1962, 1988) and from cognitive approaches to text comprehension and production (BRITTON and GRAESSER, 1996; HAYES and FLOWERS, 1980, HAYES, 1996; SCARDAMALIA and BEREITER, 1992). Through the convergence of these theoretical perspectives, the proposal promotes IC in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, related to environmental conservation, as well as actions for writing texts in Spanish. The planned language activities involve working with different text genres on environmental issues, such as the extinction of animal species, the production of genetically modified foods and the use of agrochemicals that contaminate the biosphere and threaten the life of all living species, including human beings. The exercises related to these topics, at the same time, encourage students to reflect on critical environmental issues and to develop strategies for writing texts in Spanish. To conclude, it can be argued that the IC proposal is based on social and intercultural approaches that integrate teaching actions, text production processes and science issues regarding the environment. As a result, students are regarded as subjects with competencies to understand discourses from different cultures and to think, write and act within their natural, social and cultural environments.