MYP and DP language acquisition alignment

What is the alignment between the MYP and DP language acquisition subject?

New DP Language Acquisition Guide has been implemented since September 2018 for the first assessment in 2020. When there is a new DP guide being published, teachers often feel uncertain and wonder how they can best prepare their students for the exam. Schools want to register teachers for workshops as soon as possible so that students can get a head start and not fall behind.

I think attending workshops to discuss the changes and explore strategies to implement new requirements is important. I also think it is far more important to become familiar with the guide and gain a deeper understanding of why changes are made before we dive into the course and assessment design. 

After carefully reading the new DP language acquisition guide (first exam 2020), I noticed that the connections between the MYP and DP are further enhanced. Here are the shared aims stated in the guide: 

• develop communication skills in additional language;
• develop insights into the features, process and craft of language, and the concept of culture, encouraging students to see that there are diverse ways of living, behaving and viewing the world;
• developing intercultural understanding and global engagement, leading to international-mindedness;
• providing opportunities for learning through inquiry and the development of critical-and creative-thinking skills;
• fostering curiosity and desire for lifelong learning;
• understanding and respecting other languages and cultures.

Understanding the shared aims benefits us in designing the MYP and DP language acquisition courses. The design of the MYP and DP language acquisition courses should allow students not only to learn the target language but also learn about the language through the conceptual understandings of communication, connections, creativity, and culture (key concepts in the MYP). Entering the DP, students continue to develop subject mastery through linguistic related concepts, including audience, context, purpose, meaning, and variation. Although variation is not mentioned in the MYP, this concept can be easily explored through the contextual lens of Orientation in Space and Time.   

Language acquisition is most effective when students can practice their knowledge and skills through real-life situations. The MYP Global Contexts and the DP Themes provide relevant contexts and opportunities for students to communicate matters of personal, local or national, and global interest. It is important for teachers to identify relevant and meaningful contexts when designing language learning units. Depending on a different context, the focus of the unit of work and the selection of texts will also be different. Here are my explorations of the DP themes and MYP global contexts by studying festivals focusing on the Chinese New Year.    

Examining the assessment objectives closely, it is important for teaches to select materials that enable students to develop an awareness of own culture and enable them to foster intercultural understanding. The importance of developing multiliteracies can not be neglected. In the MYP, students are required to comprehending multimodal texts and in the DP, one of the objectives is for students to understand, analyse and reflect upon a range of written, audio, visual and audio-visual texts. In both MYP and DP, we need to engage students in communication practices in comprehending multimodal texts that involve at least two modes. For example, students might watch a short Youtube video clip and analyse the audio (sound effects) and the visual images. If we consistently implement the multimodal approach for language acquisition teaching and learning, I am confident that students will not only be ready for the DP language acquisition course, but they will also be better prepared to apply their linguistic knowledge, understanding and skills in real life after they graduate from high school. 

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