Key Concepts and Theories Origins of Monolingual Principle

Ecology Theory

van Lier (2004: 53) argues that language is always a meaning-making activity that takes place in a complex network of systems that are interwoven among themselves as well as with all aspects of physical, social and symbolic worlds. It is influenced by multiple layers of factors at a social, political and economic level. Thus, teaching methods must reflect the dynamic and authentic complexity of language learning and the learning context. Language skills developed in the classroom should be able to facilitate language use in communicative situations that students may encounter in the future in their professional or academic lives and should never be unconnected. In addition to functional language abilities, students should also develop critical language awareness, interpretation and translation skills. The ecological framework (van Lier 2004) calls for a curricular where the learners’ full linguistic repertoire is utilised as viewed as a logical imperative for successful learning (Levine 2011: 23). A monolingual pedagogy for L2 learning should be rejected because it denies students the right to draw on their language resources and strengths by forcing a focus on childlike uses of language and excluding the possibility of critical reflection.

Multi-competence Theory

Multi-competence is the knowledge of more than one language in the same mind or the same community (Cook and Li 2016). Multicompetence presents a view on second language acquisition based on the notion of the second language user as a whole person rather than on the monolingual native speaker. This concept emphasises the whole mind of the speaker instead of their first language or their second. It postulates that someone who knows two or more languages is a different person from someone who is monolingual and therefore needs to be looked at in their own right rather than as a deficient monolingual. Multi-competence changes the angle from which second language acquisition is viewed. It has important implications for language teaching goals and methodology. Multi-competence theory provides the fundamental theoretical basis for this study. In this study, CSL learners are already multilingual speakers. The goal of Chinese learning is to add another language to their rich linguistic repertoire to facilitate their life and work in Chinese society.