Our ELT Classrooms as Global Ecoliteracy Hot Spots

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One of the things that can make learning English as an additional language difficult is multiple meanings for the same word or phrase. Take as an example hot spot, which has at least six meanings, including a place of unusual interest or popularity, or conversely, an area considered dangerous due to unrest. For many of our multilingual learners of English (MLEs), the most likely understanding of this term is as a place with a wireless internet connection.

The term biodiversity hotspot can also have multiple specific meanings, including a biogeographic region where biodiversity is under threat and where the area has lost 70% of its primary vegetation. This month’s blog focuses on our classrooms as exciting hot spots of interest for learning about language in the context of biodiversity and conservation, with examples from across the planet.

Last year, 2023, was the hottest year on record, and yet, may be also the coolest, at least for very many years to come. Disruptions in ecosystems and in the balance of nature from climate change and the mass extinction of species threaten all life on the planet. The rate and scope of biodiversity loss is dramatic and daunting, with up to two million species at risk for extinction, many of them insects. This estimate is double what it was up until even very recently. The sharp decline in pollinator species, such as birds, bats, butterflies, and bees, threatens the balance of nature and the human food supply. In addition to species extinction, human activity has resulted in land, water, and air being polluted all across the planet, along with deforestation, soil depletion, and ocean warming. Human activity has already severely altered 75% of the land and 66% of the ocean.
 

Conservation and Protecting Biodiversity

Biodiversity creates resilience in natural systems, and when that biodiversity is lost, vulnerabilities increase, resulting, for example, in the spread of disease and pandemics. However, nature is regenerative. This is one of the most basic, yet most encouraging facts of ecoliteracy.

Many of the solutions to the environmental crises we are experiencing involve allowing nature to do what it does “naturally” — to regenerate. Of course, the damage to the planet is so deep and widespread that solutions are needed across all sectors and systems, from wisely designed and applied geoengineering projects (following the precautionary principle and anticipating unintended consequences), to legislation and policymaking, to allowing for rewilding and regeneration. Here, we’ll focus on nature-based solutions and regeneration, where these often intersect with policymaking, specifically in the case of 30 x 30 (thirty by thirty) initiatives.

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Focus on Language

As always, do language and word study as appropriate to your learners. For this content, I would do word study and focus on the meanings of several root words, prefixes, and possibly the suffix –tion. For example:

• • geo (engineering)
  • bio(diversity/region)
  • re(generation/wilding)
  • con(servation)
  • pro(tection).

This unit is also ripe for geography study of many kinds and identifying continents, countries, (bio)regions, and peoples as appropriate for your learners. Finally, it is also excellent for studying numbers and statistics, which are cited in many of the above links.

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This article first appeared on the TESOL Blog. Reprinted with permission.