Macro-level Language Policies Research Articles

The Micropolitics of Success and Failure in Languages for Specific Purposes

The article aims at analysing the various perceptions of success and failure in LSP among language policy agents. Do they have a homogeneous view of success and failure? How coherent is each agent’s vision? The corpus is composed of positions of the Council of Europe, of the French State and of student unions. It appears that for each examined agent, the notions of success and failure are complex and ambiguous. The fact of considering that a learner has succeeded, or failed, has consequences on every other LSP agent as part of a complex system. This emphasises the difficulty of assessing for both teachers and students, as well as teachers’ social responsibility. The article eventually shows the interest of micro-level studies of LSP agents’ conceptual differences to account for the dynamics of macro-level language policies.

Planning micro-level language education reform in new diaspora sites: two-way immersion education in the rural Midwest

Discontinuities are often found between top-down language education policies and local language policy enactments, as de facto language policymaking results from stakeholders’ negotiation and interpretation of policy mandates. Teachers occupy a particular role in the execution of language education policies, as they are the “final arbiters” of what takes place in the classroom. Due to the spreading of the Latino Diaspora to non-metropolitan areas, US rural school districts experiencing a flow of English language learners represent salient new contexts for language policy implementation. Since 1973, the state of Illinois has mandated a top-down K-12 Transitional Bilingual Education policy for English language learners, which some school districts have contested by creating two-way immersion programs. Drawing on teacher and administrator personal narratives, this study describes a case of primarily White teachers’ reintepretation and “correction” of macrolevel language policies and development of a two-way immersion program in rural Illinois. It traces the processes educators experienced when enacting state language policies with limited educational resources and no professional expertise. It also unveils how the implementation of subtractive bilingual education and professional development opportunities shaped teachers’ language ideologies and transformed them into resisters of top-down mandates and enactors of a bottom-up dual language policy. While the interplay of macrolevel language policies, teachers’ individual professional experiences and evolving language ideologies generated imple- mentational and ideological spaces challenging remedial educational approaches, programmatic choices were also constrained by social forces, as community members challenged the teachers’ choice of bilingual teaching for all children.

Language-in-education planning: the use of emergent Web 2.0 genres in the south of Italy

This paper analyses the rationale for the creation of multimedia texts, in the context of learning English in an economically and socially depressed context. Issues of implementation of macro-level language policies in a local context are particularly stringent when the macro-level approach is rendered impracticable for some reason (e.g. cost, time and so on) and where the local context, though responsive to macro-level policies, does not have sufficient resources to implement the required services. In keeping with its educational goals, the University of Messina's Language Centre (CLAM) has promoted foreign language learning by investing in young local researchers (aged 25–35) and greater quality assurance vis-à-vis levels of educational and linguistic achievement. CLAM has also encouraged the locally based production of innovative multimedia texts designed to engage students in personal and creative uses, fostering learning built on a web-based environment. Language-in-education planning needs to be addressed to wider audiences, encompassing students, teachers, tutors, testers and other stakeholders, such as academics, deans, rectors and society at large. The use of new genres makes it possible to pinpoint several areas of intervention and satisfy more general issues, such as the cost-effectiveness of the planned intervention/s, the engagement of students and teachers in a virtuous circle and the enrichment of the entire learning/teaching experience. In particular, the website delivers audio-texts in the form of podcasts which are a part of CLAM's blog, http://www.Englishblog.it. Our podcasts encourage peer learning and promote a learning experience based on mobile technologies: they are used ‘on the move’ by students to learn English. As well as podcasts, the website includes other related activities, such as transcriptions of the audio texts which provide feedback on listening activities, lexicogrammatical exercises, reading passages, as well as tools that publish written/spoken comments – all part of the process of helping students to negotiate meanings, define learning styles and strategies and establish objectives. In our experience, multimedia services are a cost-effective and valid resource. They are flexible, can be used in a wide range of teaching and learning contexts and are provided gratis following the principle of sharing free, downloadable resources in an open-learning web community. A constant interplay between macro-level language policies and micro-level responses is viable where achievement is not measured in simplistic and quantitative terms (i.e. students passing a final test), but where instead the horizons of assessment are broadened to encompass the significance of engaging a more comprehensive cohort of participants (e.g. teachers and researchers). Assessing the outcomes implies taking into account other domains, such as students' and teachers' growing literacy in the use of new media.

La politica del multilinguismo e l'apprendimento della lingua

- This paper focuses on a number of developments in macro-level language policies, outlines the background to the new status of the Irish language in the European Union and attempts to examine a proposal designed to improve the teaching of Irish in particular and language learning in general. At the moment the teaching of Irish is undergoing a serious crisis. While almost all primary school children in Ireland are able to speak English and Irish, in English-based schools the majority of students make no progress in Irish. To facilitate learning a second language a proposal is made for a preparatory approach involving the teaching of Esperanto in primary and middle school in Ireland in particular and Europe in general.

Macro-Level policy and Micro-Level planning

This article reports on a study which investigated the language lives of Afrikaans-speaking South African immigrants in New Zealand. Particularly, it focuses on their awareness of and attitudes to language policy in both South Africa and New Zealand, and how these influence their own and their family’s language practices. Narrative interviews with 28 participants living in towns and cities across New Zealand reveal that while living in South Africa they were generally aware of macro-level language policies in the country, and were able to articulate how these policies influenced language practices at work and within their families. The absence of an explicit national language policy in New Zealand means that these immigrants, on arrival in New Zealand, base their understanding of the linguistic context in the country on the language practices that they observe in their day-to-day lives. It is these observations which guide their decision-making with regard to their own and their family’s language practices.

Macro-Level policy and Micro-Level planning

This article reports on a study which investigated the language lives of Afrikaans-speaking South African immigrants in New Zealand. Particularly, it focuses on their awareness of and attitudes to language policy in both South Africa and New Zealand, and how these influence their own and their family’s language practices. Narrative interviews with 28 participants living in towns and cities across New Zealand reveal that while living in South Africa they were generally aware of macro-level language policies in the country, and were able to articulate how these policies influenced language practices at work and within their families. The absence of an explicit national language policy in New Zealand means that these immigrants, on arrival in New Zealand, base their understanding of the linguistic context in the country on the language practices that they observe in their day-to-day lives. It is these observations which guide their decision-making with regard to their own and their family’s language practices.

Macro-level policy and micro-level planning: afrikaans-speaking immigrants in New Zealand

This article reports on a study which investigated the language lives of Afrikaans-speaking South African immigrants in New Zealand. Particularly, it focuses on their awareness of and attitudes to language policy in both South Africa and New Zealand, and how these influence their own and their familys language practices. Narrative interviews with 28 participants living in towns and cities across New Zealand reveal that while living in South Africa they were generally aware of macro-level language policies in the country, and were able to articulate how these policies influenced language practices at work and within their families. The absence of an explicit national language policy in New Zealand means that these immigrants, on arrival in New Zealand, base their understanding of the linguistic context in the country on the language practices that they observe in their day-to-day lives. It is these observations which guide their decision-making with regard to their own and their familys language practices. Copyright 2006 Gary Barkhuizen and Ute Knoch. No part of this article may be reproduced by any means without the written consent of the publisher.