Implementation Of Language Policy Research Articles

Language, identity, and citizenship in a U.S. University: immigrant English learners’ identity (re)positioning

ABSTRACTIn response to growing linguistic diversity, many U.S. universities have implemented language policies that include procedures for English learner (EL) identification. Institutional labels such as “English learner” and “limited English proficiency” are regularly used to identify students who may need English language support; these same identifiers often imply a deficit perspective of students. Employing a multiple-case study and ethnographic design, this study examines immigrant ELs’ experiences with institutional policies and practices that assign them labels based on their citizenship status and how those labels then affect their identities and sense of place within the university. In this study, immigrant ELs refer to students who have U.S. K-12 schooling, hold permanent residency, or U.S. citizenship, have a first language that is not English, and may have limited English proficiency. Immigrant ELs appropriated policy in order to negotiate institutional labels as manifested in university policies and practices. While immigrant EL policy appropriation allowed them to (re)position their identities, it furthered immigrant EL marginalization and alienation, reproduced ethnic and EL, and undergirded acculturation and assimilation. This study draws attention to the process and practice of identity and the role of language policy and agency in this process in higher education settings.

Learner autonomy in foreign language policies in Vietnamese universities: an exploration of teacher agency from a sociocultural perspective

Learner autonomy (LA) is generally accepted as an important goal, either explicit or implicit, in language education policies across polities. Fostering LA in educational settings primarily depends on the role of teachers in enacting macro-level policies at the micro level. While various top-down and bottom-up frameworks for language policy implementation have been proposed, little attention has been given to the relationships between the macro and the micro contexts in relation to the policy and practice of LA. This paper, which is part of a larger project, examines these relationships to discuss their implications for fostering LA in the Vietnamese higher education context. It draws on data from interviews and classroom observations with university English teachers who are conceived as policy actors at the micro level. The findings suggest that while the translation of macro LA policies to the micro level can be seen as being characterised by “policy dumping”, LA development in the English language classroom is also reflective of micro-level actors’ exercise of agency. This agency is motivated by teachers’ sense of responsibility towards their students and their academic wellbeing. It is argued that the voices of these policy actors should be granted more reception and credibility in negotiating LA in macro–micro policy processes.

English Language Testing in Moodle: Step Towards University of Latvia Language Policy Implementation

Along with globalisation, university internalisation has taken place, leading to the support for the national and foreign language policies in universities. This has resulted in the expansion of English as a lingua franca of academia. The aims of this study were to discuss the results of the focused descriptive study aimed at obtaining information on the status quo of the students’ English language proficiency level at the University of Latvia (UL) and the feasibility of the introduction of an in-house Moodle-based testing introduction into the learning process at the UL. The piloted test results demonstrate that generally the students have an appropriate English language proficiency level for academic studies at the UL at all degree levels, although exhibiting limitations in writing and some limitations in listening skills. It has also been concluded that Moodle-based online language testing is helpful to meet the language policy goals set out at the University of Latvia.

Different paradigms in the history of Spanish language policy and planning

ABSTRACTThe current glocal dynamics poses new questions and challenges for scholars engaged in the study of language policy and planning (LPP), especially with regard to the adoption of measures for the democratisation of languages and their speakers. The latest studies have highlighted the role of speakers’ agency (their attitudes, beliefs and practices) as triggering factors in the successful implementation of language policies. In view of the above, the present paper analyses how the different theoretical frameworks in the history of LPP are reflected upon the discursive performance of the different normative agents in the Spanish-speaking world: from governments and other regulatory organisations such as language academies to LPP researchers themselves, whose work is crucial to develop the conceptual and methodological tools of the discipline. An adaptation and contextualisation of the orientations developed by Ruiz [1984. “Orientations in Language Planning.” NABE Journal 8: 15–34] will help us observe the evolution of the different paradigms in the Spanish-speaking world when it comes to the writings of mainstream linguists and language planners. It is our conviction that an ethnographic and critical approach to the inquiry of Spanish LPP needs to be adopted in a de facto promotion of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism.

Language and language-in-education planning in multilingual India: a minoritized language perspective

This article explores India’s linguistic diversity from a language policy perspective, emphasizing policies relevant to linguistic minorities. The Kumaun region of Utterakhand provides a local, minority-language perspective on national-level language planning. A look at the complexity of counting India’s languages reveals language planning implicit in the Indian census. The more explicit status planning involved in the naming of official languages is explored in the Indian Constitution. An overview of India’s language-in-education policies for languages to be taught and languages to be used as media of instruction further illustrates status and acquisitions planning affecting India’s linguistic minorities. The Indian example informs and stretches the language planning frameworks used to analyze it, adding status-planning goals of legitimization, minimization, and protection. Finally, the question of what actually happens in education for linguistic minorities opens up a conversation about the pluralistic language practices common in multilingual contexts beyond the implementation of official language and education policies.

Language policy in Malawi: A study of its contexts, factors for its development and consequences

The article examines the different factors and contexts which have influenced language policy in Malawi from the time of early missionaries to the present, and highlights the implications and consequences of the language policy—both politically, educationally and socially. However, given the conceptual framework of language policy and the historical, linguistic and cultural disposition of the Malawian society which emphasize education, the article has its main focus on the education system. In addition to intensive literature review and document analysis, semi-structured interviews, mainly with secondary school teachers, were conducted in Mzimba District in July 2014. The study ascertains that current language practices were founded on the framework and philosophies of various missionary groups which have highly influenced and affected the development of both indigenous and foreign languages in Malawi. It further discovered that the long-standing leadership of Hastings Kamuzu Banda has had a huge impact on language attitude, practices and the overall language policy. However, since the election of Bakili Muluzi and the new multi-party democracy, the policy has generally been characterised by linguistic pluralism although not much has been done to make it more favourable to vernacular languages due to lack of resources and improper implementation. The paper concludes that the implementation of language policy in Malawi, like in many other African countries, faces many challenges and is riddled with contradictions whether implicit or explicit. Keywords: Language of Learning and Teaching (LoLT), linguistic justice, vertical communication, language attitude, language policy, linguistic pluralism

Challenges of the implementation of language policies in southern Africa: what is the way forward?

At the attainment of independence, most African governments adopted the colonisers’ foreign languages as official languages to be used in business, the judiciary, education, local government and parliament. Examples of foreign languages that have dominated local languages in Africa are English, French and Portuguese. This paper argues that indigenous languages in Southern Africa, which is the focus of the survey, have low variety status vis-a-vis foreign languages for a variety of reasons, the major being the challenges faced in the implementation of the language policies in these countries. While the survey found that there are language policies in the country studied, it can be concluded that having a language policy in place is not congruent to its implementation and its desired effects. The study recommends adopting the Tanzanian language policy model that formalised Swahili as a national language for all purposes. To all intents and purposes, the Swahili model has been a resounding success. Keywords : Linguistics, language policy, Southern Africa

Learner agency in language planning

The role of language teacher agency in language policy and planning (LPP) enactment and implementation at the micro-level has received increasing treatment in the literature. Under-addressed in this context, however, is the role of the learner and the extent to which learner activity can be agentive. Seeking to redress this situation, this paper focusses on learner agency in LPP. After establishing a general ecology of language context, issues related to the problematic concept of ‘agency’ are addressed. This discussion draws upon poststructuralist critiques as well as the insights of sociocultural theory. A poststructuralist perspective provides a broad philosophical base for problematizing learner agency and supplies a critique of the limited structuralist approach characteristic of traditional LPP. A sociocultural lens supplies a more concrete conceptualization of how agentive learner activity operates interactively with teacher agency. The final section of the paper focusses on ethnography as a research methodology; ethnographic research yields qualitative data on learner agency that can be drawn upon in micro planning and policy-making. A relevant case study employing ethnographic methodology is discussed. The conclusion is that learner agency should be given more prominence in LPP research and literature.

Interests and conflicts: exploring the context for early implementation of a dual language policy in one middle school

Dual language immersion program models represent a potentially effective way to serve growing numbers of English language learners (ELLs) in schools and districts. However, local challenges, such as interpersonal conflict, can impact the process of implementing dual language policies and programs, limiting the extent to which they are able to meet academic and equity goals for ELLs. Existing research provides little direct knowledge about how disagreements and competing interests influence dual language policies and programs. This study employs qualitative methods to examine how individuals understand and interpret the conflicts around a new dual language policy at one middle school. It presents a case study of local actors at the beginning of the implementation process, highlighting the tensions created by the interaction of policy with the material and ideological concerns of the individual actors. The findings describe how the interests of staff members both aligned and conflicted with each other and with the values embedded in the dual language policy. The study also reveals the influence of the local school district central office and brings to the surface disagreements amongst the staff about the appropriate role of the central office in the policy implementation process. This study suggests that the diverse material interests and ideologies of individual actors are important factors in the language policy implementation process.

Embracing the use of African languages as additional languages of teaching and learning in KwaZulu-Natal schools

This article posits that the implementation of language policy in South Africa and particularly in the KwaZulu- Natal Department of Education remains a challenge, notwithstanding existing attempts by policies to promote multilingualism and guard against the use of language to perpetuate inequalities which were entrenched by the past history of the country. In this article it is argued that the use of foreign languages as the only languages of teaching and learning in KwaZulu-Natal schools impedes access to the curriculum by African learners who are neither English nor Afrikaans. The article challenges the mission of the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education in that the Department cannot champion transformation successfully if African languages are left behind as languages of teaching and learning. The article poses recommendations as to how the apparent linguistic imperialism, which is a human rights violation, can be turned around to linguistic diversity that is based on linguistic justice.

Language Policies, Ideologies and Attitudes in Catalonia. Part 1: Reversing Language Shift in the Twentieth Century

AbstractThis and a paired article to appear in a subsequent issue of this journal review the sociolinguistic and allied research on language attitudes, ideologies and practices in Catalonia in the context of two major sequential official language policies. The present article is devoted to the first policy called Normalització Lingüística (Linguistic Normalization), implemented in 1983 by the autonomous government of Catalonia. The policy was a language planning effort in a then bilingual society to reverse language shift from Catalan to Spanish in the aftermath of a dictatorship and linguistic repression.Our review of the research on that policy shows that language planners assumed modern constructions of languages as bounded units tied to distinct groups. Given the conflictive history of Spain, they explicitly set out to provide a supportive framework for Catalan that would not overly antagonize the large sector of Catalan society that was at the time mostly monolingual Spanish‐speaking. Normalization has been seen as largely successful, but a deeper look at the research shows much of the Catalonian population moving beyond those assumptions; for instance, a number of researchers point to a valuing of bilingualism as indexing a cosmopolitan identity. Even sectors that show more monolinguistic tendencies do so less out of pure ethnolinguistic loyalty than complex intersectionalities and personal ideological stances.The two stories behind each of these periods will be of interest to language planners as well as to researchers interested in the societal and individual challenges and changes emerging from the implementation of official language policies in bilingual and multilingual societies.

Language Policy and Medium of Instruction Issue in Pakistan

The issue of language in Pakistan is not just related to linguistics. It has far more implications for cultural, economic, political, and social issues. The current paper studies the latest language policy of Pakistan and its implications for local languages. It then relates to the formation and implementation of a (certain steps) sound language policy to root out the conflicts and ethnic clashes from time to time in the country, and to survive the language shock of majority of students in Pakistan, who are taught English as compulsory subject up to 14 years of education. The current situation of the country also correlates to the puzzling phenomenon of cultural aversive attitudes towards English language by the masses. The current teaching methods and curriculum employed in the institutions of Pakistan, for decades, have only been successful in maintaining the gap between the privileged English related people and the hardcore anti-English sentiments. In this battle for linguistic-identity crisis and supremacy, a lot of national talent has been wasted. This paper briefly re-explores the situation of languages in the country on the first step, then it moves on to focus on the national policy, its flaws, and it possible ways out by bringing in examples from Chinese and Indian Language Policies.

“More & Earlier”: Neoliberalism and Primary English Education in Mexican Public Schools

As global English expands, developing countries feel the pressure that, in order to remain globally competitive, they must increase the number of people with English proficiency. In response, many countries have significantly expanded English instruction in public schools by implementing primary English language teaching (PELT) programs. This is particularly true in countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America, where national Ministries of Education have taken a “more & earlier” approach, integrating English into the public primary curriculum. Children start learning English younger and study the language more during their basic education. The author argues that this language education policy shift toward expanding English in the public education curricula in developing countries is best understood as a shift from past models of elite English bilingualism to policies intended to support the macroacquisition, or general proficiency in English. The rationale for this policy change is framed in terms of the “modernization” and “internationalization” of a country’s public education system, and hence should be understood as part of the response to align education curricula and programs with neoliberal policies. The author examines Mexico’s recent national English program for public primary schools as a case study in the implementation of neoliberal language policy.

Community support - the missing link in indigenous language promotion in South Africa?

Literature on the challenges facing indigenous languages in South Africa often highlights the proverbial policy-practice gap among many other constraints. Drawing on lessons from language policy implementation programmes in other countries, this article offers a critical examination of how the policy-practice gap is potentially driven by a glaring lack of cultivating community support. Although community support has been proven to be crucial in implementing language policies around the world, in South Africa the language policy is designed and implemented from a largely top-down approach. The article provides a brief analysis of the activities of selected non-state actors who promote indigenous languages in the country. It concludes by proposing that greater attention be paid to community support as a necessary and critical step towards ensuring more positive outcomes in promoting indigenous languages in South Africa.

Language policy implementation in South African universities vis-a-vis the speakers of indigenous African languages' perception

After the demise of apartheid in 1994, South Africa adopted a new constitution that bolstered the image of indigenous African languages through a multilingual language policy scenario. Indigenous African languages were further boosted by the National Language-in-Education Policy Acts that were propounded subsequent to the adoption of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa in 1996 and the Languages Bill that was promulgated in November 2012 (Mutasa, 2014). Given these developments, one would have hoped for changes in terms of perceptions and language use in universities where the traces of the vestiges of the colonial legacy were still apparent. The aim of this article is to highlight the extent to which the language choices of universities and perceptions of academics and students impact on the process of implementing the multilingual language policies in universities.

МЕТАЯЗЫК КАК ПЕДАГОГИЧЕСКИЙ ФЕНОМЕН И ЕГО РОЛЬ В ЯЗЫКОВОМ РАЗВИТИИ ЛИЧНОСТИ В ШКОЛЕ

The aim of this article is to consider psychological and pedagogical mechanisms of personal language development and formation of humanitarian culture of schoolchildren as part of their general culture by means of language as a symbolic and cultural phenomenon. Methods. Theoretical analysis, synthesis, generalization, specification, comparison, classification are the methods applied in this research. Conclusions are made on the basis of contemporary socio-cultural and linguistic situation analysis of fundamental psycho-pedagogical and linguistic theories and generalization of experience of the network project «Language personality development in the system of general education at schools of the Tyumen region». Results. It is proved that effective language education in the context of contemporary socio-cultural situation and new educational standard requirements is possible on the basis of updating axiological humanitarian approaches, which are linguistic and culturological, semiotic, hermeneutic; and help to design the meta language educational space as a space of intersection of different languages, subject-specific and interdisciplinary, cognitive and linguistic pictures of the world, between different speech practices. The article considers the nature and content of the metalanguage, based on mental corpus of individuals, including cultural, linguistic, semiotic concepts, metaphorical layer of language, cognitive metaphors, idioms, phraseological units, etc. It is proved that reading and understanding of text, its analysis and personal interpretation, production of «secondary» and «counter» texts are the main types of metalanguage activities in the process of general personality development, when metalanguage is a mechanism of conceptualization of individual consciousness, the formation of individual linguistic picture of the world and individual concept sphere, enrichment of personal worldviews and sensitive experience, and value development of metatext of culture. Scientific novelty. The article reveals the author’s concept of language development and metalanguage as a pedagogical phenomenon, which in the educational semiotics is systemic. The concept of metalanguage, which is a universal language, the language of culture is a broad way to build meta-scientific concepts, a tool of mastering all subject areas and different «subject» languages at school. Practical significance. The materials provided in this article will help teachers, heads of educational institutions in the implementation of new language policies and organization of the process of language development of personality based on humanitarian approaches.

LANGUAGE OF LEARNING AND TEACHING IN A MULTILINGUAL SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT: WHAT DO TEACHERS THINK?

ABSTRACTOne of the enduring problems of South African educational policy changes in the past 20 years is the fact that curricula, legislation and policies have changed radically while the staff complement has remained relatively stable. Despite a progressive national language policy, schools have increasingly introduced English as the sole language of learning and teaching (LoLT), preferably from the earliest grades. In all the debate about the ‘best’ language of learning and teaching, however, there seems to be a missing voice: that of the teacher. Using an analytical framework developed by Richard Baldauf, this study shows how a focus on micro level language planning activities is important for teacher development and language policy implementation. When debating language issues, particularly the language of learning and teaching, teachers do not have a big enough say or may not be fully aware of alternative models for multilingual classes. This study brings the teacher's voice to the language policy debate. The results show that teachers are keenly aware of the multilingual context and their views and decision-making processes reflect this awareness.

Ownership of Language in Yucatec Maya Revitalization Pedagogy

This classroom-based study examined a Yucatec Maya language course for teachers and the pedagogical implementation of national language policy in Mexico. Analysis of this teacher education program focused on various dimensions of teachers' Maya-language expertise, the teaching of the emergent standard Maya, and hegemonic constructions of Maya-speakers in language planning discourse. Ownership of language, defined as a speaker's authenticity and authority vis-à-vis the language, emerged as an important concern.

Beyond the CEFR: Towards Standardization of Language Competence Recognition in Europe

The creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has evidenced the need for the development of language policies at universities. University-based language centres have made a great contribution to the development of language learning since their emergence and have played a major role in the development and implementation of language policies and language education.In addition to teaching and training Language Centres have another important function as university students are now required to prove their language competence at different stages during their university studies for mobility, graduating, entrance to master programmes, etc., as well as for better job opportunities in the international market. This new function of language centres can be defined as the need for the development of more reliable systems for the accreditation or certification of language competence which will provide a basis for comparability of levels of assessment at European level.As a consequence, national language associations throughout Europe are immersed in a process for the design of a common model for the accreditation of language competence in higher education institutions that allows for comparability in achievement across languages and institutions, but which at the same time, allows for degrees of variation and the possibility to reflect the specific needs and aims of the different institutions.In the present work we describe the evolution of the accreditation process in Europe, with special attention to the model developed by the Spanish Association of Higher Education Language Centres (ACLES).

Towards a practical proposal for multilingualism in education in Kenya

This article proposes multilingualism in education, where indigenous languages are used alongside English as the media of instruction in schools to eventually promote their use in Kenya. It begins by stating Kenya’s language policy in education. It then states the responses given by some primary and secondary school teachers who were interviewed on the implementation of the language policy in schools and their attitude towards the possibility of using the mother tongues in teaching some subjects in primary schools and beyond. The differing situation from school to school shows inconsistency in the language policy implementation. Some teachers’ views show that indigenous languages should not be forgotten. The article suggests that the indigenous languages should be used more in education and should have an economic value. Finally, plurality is viewed as an African reality and the need to develop a language policy that will strengthen the position of indigenous languages is recognized.