Towards a Plurilingual Approach in English Language Teaching: Softening the Boundaries Between Languages

& This forum article presents a critique of the policy of language isolation in TESOL and proposes an innovative plurilingual approach to the teaching of English that softens the boundaries between languages. First, the article looks at how teaching English as a second or foreign language has traditionally been associated with teaching practices that encourage the isolation of English from the other languages in the student’s repertoire and in the school curriculum. Then, some proposals that consider the need to make the boundaries between languages softer are considered, including the concept of plurilingualism of the Council of Europe. The article ends by providing some teaching implications for TESOL professionals. English is the dominant language of international communication, and as such it is intensively used and taught in the European Union (EU) as well as elsewhere in the world. The results of the European Survey on Language Competences (ESLC) indicate that, outside the United Kingdom, English is the most widely taught foreign language in the EU with the exception of the Flemish and German communities of