Teaching L1 in Five European Countries: Goals and Challenges

In this chapter we reflect on L1 education in five educational jurisdictions in Europe: Finland, Spain, Czech Republic, Portugal and Poland, exploring what the main goals of the L1 national curricula are, as well as the challenges that L1 language education in these countries is facing. It shows that beyond idiosyncratic realities, L1 education operates on a common ground on an international basis: language education in compulsory schooling pursues the development of students’ communicative competence, focusing attention on how to listen, speak, read and write and, ultimately, interact, considering language both a medium of communication and a medium for learning, as well as an object to reflect upon, and with the final goal of facilitating access to literate culture.