The LEA (Language Educator Awareness) training kit comprises a set of practical instruments designed to help teacher educators introduce the essential aspects of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism to language teachers and learners. It consists of a printed booklet setting out the rationale for a series of training activities, which are contained on an accompanying CD-Rom. The kit encourages language teachers to reflect on the notion of diversity, which is so fundamental an element in the process of linguistic and communicative education - the "dialogue with the other". Its ultimate goal is to contribute towards building a school capable of providing local and global perspectives on the language curriculum, of offering communication opportunities with peoples and cultures from far away as well as nearby and of promoting the ability to speak languages with different statuses and functions.
Within the scope of today’s globalisation, linguistic diversity is a given fact of the world we live in. In several educational contexts in Europe, language awareness (LA) activities have been introduced with the objective to prepare pupils cognitively, socially and/or critically for life as multilingual, open minded and/or empowered citizens in a diverse world. Despite previous research in various contexts, the concept of LA remains problematic: a generally accepted, evidence-based conceptualisation is missing. This confronts both research and education with a challenge: in order to develop LA activities, implement them successfully in educational contexts and achieve the expected outcomes, we should know what the concept stands for, how it works and why we would choose to implement it in classrooms (or not). This volume focuses on three apparent simple questions: what, how and why? The first question – what? – refers to the concept(ual mess) of LA. The second question – how? – refers to the implementation of LA activities in several educational contexts. The third question – why? – is a recurrent theme running through all the chapters and deals with a reflection on the way we deal (un)consciously with LA activities in education.
The Routledge Handbook of Plurilingual Language Education is the first comprehensive publication on plurilingualism, offering a multidimensional reflection on the nature, scope, and potential of plurilingualism in language education and society. Authored by a range of internationally recognized experts, the Handbook provides an overview of key perspectives on plurilingualism in a complementary range of fields. After a comprehensive introduction to the concept itself, 24 chapters are organized in six parts, each examining plurilingualism through a different lens. The Handbook spans historical, philosophical, and sociological dimensions, examines cognitive and neuroscientific implications, and the limitations of boundaries before moving to a pragmatic perspective: How is plurilingual language education developing in different contexts around the world? How can it contribute to language revitalization? How can it be expected to develop in education, digital spaces, and society as a whole? Written for an international audience, this handbook is an indispensable reference tool for scholars in education and applied linguistics, educators, graduate and post-graduate students, and policy makers.
This book addresses the ways in which languages education around the world has changed in recent years to recognise and reflect the increasing phenomenon of societal multilingualism. It examines the implications for research, theory, policy and practice.
This manual contains overviews on language acquisition and distinguishes between first- and second-language acquisition. It also deals with Romance languages as foreign languages in the world and with language acquisition in some countries of the Romance-speaking world. This reference work will be helpful for researchers, students, and teachers interested in language acquisition in general and in Romance languages in particular.
With contributions from leading scholars all around the world, this volume underlines the ever-pressing need for new language in education policies to include all learners’ voices in the multilingual classroom and to empower teachers to develop responsive and transformative pedagogies. Using testimonies, narratives and examples from different international contexts, this book points clearly to what can be achieved practically in the multilingual classroom so that multilingual learners’ voices are legitimated, while also addressing the complex inter-relating sociolinguistic issues around the promotion of bilingualism and multilingualism in education.
The growing cultural, racial and linguistic diversity in schools has changed the face of language teaching in many countries. This book presents theory and research by a group of internationally recognised scholars who address the issues and challenges for teachers and their students in increasingly plurilingual and multicultural classrooms.
This book challenges the reader to rethink and reimagine what diversity in language education means in transnational societies. Bringing together researchers and practitioners who contributed to the international LINguistic and Cultural DIversity REinvented (LINCDIRE) project, the book examines four pillars of innovation in language education: the Action-oriented approach, Plurilingualism, Indigenous epistemologies and Technology enhanced learning. The book critically discusses plurilingual pedagogical approaches that draw on learners' linguistic and cultural repertoires to encourage and support the dynamic use of languages in curricular innovation. It is a fundamental resource for language teachers, curriculum designers and educational researchers interested in understanding current thinking on the relevance and benefit of a plurilingual paradigm shift for language education in today's societies. More specifically, this book: Examines the development of plurilingualism and the potential of real-life oriented teaching and learning. Explores the concept of plurilingual and pluricultural competence. Focuses on collaboration and reflection from a humanistic tradition. Explores educational technology and explains the limitations and challenges of adopting ready-made tools. Highlights the iterative, design-based research process that informed the development of LINCDIRE’s pedagogical framework and action-oriented scenarios. Introduces practical examples of action-oriented tasks and scenarios, and illustrates the online tool (LITE) in terms of its current functionalities and design. Describes the implementation challenges and opportunities of plurilingual action-oriented tasks and discusses the results of implementation. Finally, the book examines future pedagogical innovation and research directions in order to help readers reflect on the implications of achieving sustainable change in language education. This exciting collection addresses an important question in language education: How can plurilingualism and cultural diversity be harnessed to promote sustainable innovation in language learning and teaching? Readers will find contributions from the diverse authors timely, compelling, and engaging. — Dr. Bonny Norton, FRSC, University Killam Professor, UBC Dept. of Language & Literacy Education, Canada Embracing a design-based research framework, this book offers learners and teachers powerful validation and a rich, relatable and inspiring action-oriented approach to holistic, dynamic, mediated, embodied, true-to-life, plurilingual language teaching and learning. — Dr. Elka Todeva, Professor of Applied Linguistics, MATESOL Program / Advanced Seminar in Plurilingual Pedagogy, SIT Graduate Institute, Washington, D.C. Anyone seeking innovation in Language Education will find in this volume a treasure trove of theoretical, empirical and methodological insights to answer the questions that arose among the 25 co-authors’ discussions to rethink language use, language learning, and language teaching. — Dr. Mercedes Bernaus, Emeritus Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain This thought-provoking and timely book argues convincingly for the need to reconceptualize innovation in language education in an increasingly diverse world. —Dr. Regine Hampel, Associate Dean (Research Excellence), Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies, The Open University, UK
This book presents an in-depth study of the language policies present in the Canadian province of Quebec, and considers them from a comparative perspective, with special focus on Singapore and Wales. In so doing, it uses a mix of methods to look at the effects of language planning on language use: questionnaires, linguistic landscapes (visible language in public space), ethnography, and psycholinguistic experiments. Besides offering background information on Canada and Quebec, the comparative element uses data from Singapore and Wales to shine a new light on how language is managed in Quebec.
