Training Teachers of Language and Culture. Language Australia Research Policy and Practice Papers.

This booklet posits that language teacher education is an important component of nation building in a multilingual community. Communication is a crucial component of nation building, and teachers play a key role in the creation, renewal, and re-negotiation of the nation and its bonds, the state and its resources. This booklet discusses the training of language teachers in Sri Lanka within the World Bank Teacher Education and Teacher Deployment Project Package Two. This document sets out a plan for trilingual competence specifically to promote peaceful coexistence. It is divided into five parts. Part one is "Teacher Education and the Making of a Nation." Part two is "National Policy Context" and is divided into five sections: "The Constitution,""The Reforms in General Education,""The National Goals of Schooling,""Sinhala and Tamil as Second Languages," and "Sinhala/Tamil in Schools and Colleges of Education." Part three is "Relation Between Language and Intercultural Competence." It has one section, "Teaching Culture in Language," as well as sections on three levels of competence--"Cultural Recognition,""Intercultural Awareness,""Multicultural Creativity." Part four is "How to Train Teachers of Interculturalism" and includes four sections "Ethnography,""Empathy,""Content Knowledge," and "The Conceptualization of 'Language'." (Contains 4 references.) (KFT)