Plurilingual Practices Research Articles

Plurilingual and Pluricultural Practices in Turkish Study Abroad: The Intersection of Identity and Lx Community

Whereas second language acquisition has embraced the multilingual turn, study abroad (SA) research often assumes that learners are situated in monolingual host societies. As the profile and preferences of the sojourner diversifies, destination sites become more cosmopolitan, and global migration patterns change the demographic makeup of communities, traditional models are no longer representative of SA. This article presents the plurilingual experiences of learners of Turkish abroad. Through analysis of weekly journals, plurilingual practice is examined as a potential resource and constraint. Findings confirm how plurilingual practice supports mutual understanding and translanguaging between participants’ L1 English and Turkish. Results also reveal how shared minority identity can support TL interaction more than seeking out “native speakers.” This study offers a unique contribution to the link between identity and language learning in SA, providing further support for the need to dismantle the preeminence of the “native speaker” as target interlocutor in study abroad.

Dynamique plurilingue dans la chronique algérienne

In this article, our main objective is to define lexical peculiarities to outline an approach that integrates theoretical data from different conceptual frameworks while considering the reality of plurilingual practices in Algeria within a specific context and at a particular moment. Our analysis highlights that the author likely favors local terms for their precision and style, aiming to provide the reader with a specific image of the Arabo-Algerian context. The use of linguistic borrowing appears to be motivated by the desire to preserve the indigenous character of discourse and express social distinction, thereby reflecting a reality specific to Algeria.

The fall of bilingualism: Teacher candidates’ voices on the implementation of critical plurilingualism in English language teaching

ABSTRACT Plurilingualism is an inclusive language teaching approach to sustain multilingual societies, but there is little investigation on teacher candidates’ (TCs) beliefs and challenges before and after its implementation. This interpretive qualitative study introduced plurilingualism in teacher education at a Canadian university. Sixteen TCs participated in the study, which 1) investigated TCs’ conceptualizations of plurilingualism, and 2) examined TCs’ perceptions of overall affordances of critical plurilingual pedagogies before and after their practicum. For four months, participants experimented with plurilingual pedagogies such as translanguaging and cross-linguistic analysis, designed tasks, and taught lessons. Five types of data were generated: 1) weekly annotations of readings on Perusall, 2) designed language tasks, 3) task delivery demonstrations, 4) lesson plans, and 5) final reflection after the teaching practicum. Inductive content analysis was conducted on NVivo with data triangulation. Findings suggest that TCs shifted their views of language, and aligned plurilingual pedagogies with equity, diversity, inclusion and decoloniality principles. Findings also show that TCs transgressed the monolingual discourses often present in schools, and felt empowered after the training. We call for the inclusion of critical plurilingual practices in teacher education programs for the sustainability of multi/plurilingualism.

Teachers' perspectives on technology-mediated plurilingual practices: the TEMPLATE project

Plurilingual-inspired pedagogies show multiple potential benefits for teaching and learning languages and have therefore been strongly promoted by the European Union through various policies. Nonetheless, their implementation is not exempt from limitations and difficulties concerning teaching practices and availability of resources. Meanwhile, technology has long been seen as a chief factor in supporting and enhancing learning in the foreign language classroom, and it can now serve plurilingual-inspired pedagogies due to its flexibility and heterogeneity. The present study reports on the results obtained from a questionnaire completed by 306 teachers across Eu- rope, which explores their perspectives on the use of technology-mediated plurilingual practices. The survey has been designed ad hoc and then distributed among in- and pre-service teachers at primary and secondary levels in 10 European countries. Our final aim is to investigate the integration of technology and plurilingual-inspired pedagogies in terms of awareness, use and training needs. Results indicate that almost half of the participants have implemented a digital-based activity that involved the use of different languages in the past, but yet claim that there is a scarcity of available information and resources. Further results look into the nature and characteristics of these plurilingual practices, as well as the role played by technology in such activities. Finally, teacher training implications derived from the results are discussed.

<i>Kshetra</i> and the nurturing of a plurilingual ethos

This article discusses a family’s plurilingualism from a southern and decolonial lens, looking at the role of language ideologies in its plurilingual practices. It focuses on the concept of space as kshetra and its accompanying plurilingual ethos, originating in the Asian origins of the family. The overarching claim is that by holding on to its legacy of a plurilingual ethos, the family has maintained its ever-changing plurilingualism over three generations by navigating a tension or duality between an out-group assimilation to the prevalent monolingualism that it encounters outside the home in its transcontinental migrations and an in-group maintenance of plurilingualism within the kshetra of the family. The article concludes that it appears to be the ethical attitude to linguistic and cultural heterogeneity, rather than the actual use or maintenance of a specific heritage language, that is of more value to transnational and transgenerational plurilingual families.

'Multilingualising' Language Education: A Teacher Training Programme for English as a 'Bridge Language' in Early Childhood Education

This article outlines a teacher training programme called: "English in the Kindergarten: Towards Multilingual Education", which was designed and implemented as a response to the introduction of English in Greek state preschools from 2021 onward. The programme aims to develop teachers' knowledge, skills, and attitudes for the introduction of the English language as a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural bridge and ultimately to promote multilingualism and inclusion in the class. It is theoretically grounded on a critical sociolinguistic approach toward languages in education, which valourises the children's entire linguistic repertoire and challenges 'parallel monolingualisms' that typify some initiatives in the field of early (foreign) language education. Classes are reimagined as spaces where learners and teachers engage with age-appropriate experiential and plurilingual practices, art-based learning, drama techniques, and puppetry. At the same time, pluralistic approaches and translanguaging are proposed to be used to leverage children's linguistic and cultural capitals as they engage with English in early language education, thus enhancing multilingual and intercultural awareness. After discussing the theoretical tenets of the program's design, an overview of its structure and sample activities is provided as well as extracts from participant teachers' output and data from its evaluation. The paper concludes with the implications of the programme and the perspective it advances.

The Use of Facebook for Senior Learners of English as a Second Language

Social media, which reaches the world, is believed to be an informal method of learning the English language. As 56.8% of the world's population is active on social media, which equals approximately 4.47 billion persons, this could be a large and wide possibility to be an English language learning platform. The method chosen to conduct this research is qualitative using discourse analysis, where a group of fifteen seniors aged 40-60 years old, with high school education levels residing in Manado, North Sulawesi, and surrounding areas were selected as participants. The participants were asked to fill out questionnaires and interviews regarding their use of Facebook and WhatsApp and their interest in the use of English while using social media. The findings of the study showed that participants used social media mainly for expressive types of speech acts such as greetings, apologies, and congratulations. The participants also tended to use the features of social media that allowed them to express emotions mostly in pictograms, with an English word of expression, pictures, and emoticons. In addition, the plurilingual practice was also observed in the use of mixed codes which served to enhance the mutual understanding and interactions among the participants.

Enablers and barriers for plurilingual practices: How EAL/D teachers support new arrivals in a rural secondary setting

Enablers and barriers for plurilingual practices: How EAL/D teachers support new arrivals in a rural secondary setting

Translanguaging practices and metalinguistic reflection during negotiation of meaning in tandem virtual exchanges

Earlier studies exploring translanguaging in virtual exchanges (Walker, 2018; Zheng et al., 2017) have mainly focused on identifying translanguaging in written chats to analyze discursive aspects and feedback processes. However, tandem virtual exchanges provide the possibility of analyzing the negotiation of meaning of linguistic aspects from the perspective of plurilingual practices, such as translanguaging, which have not yet been investigated in these contexts. The present study examines the role that the linguistic repertoires of the learners play in learner-learner interactions in tandem virtual exchanges between college-students at a Canadian and a Spanish university. Eighteen learners interacted online while carrying out oral collaborative tasks where they negotiated and co-created meaning in their respective target languages. In these interactions, the entire linguistic repertoires of the learners scaffolded the conversations and contributed to mutual understanding. Translanguaging practices occurred mostly in inquiries and explanations about linguistic aspects where metalinguistic reflection played an important role.

Exploring the affordances of multimodal competence, multichannel awareness and plurilingual lecturing in EMI

In this paper we expand on a theoretical-methodological framework for micro sociolinguistic multimodal analysis of situated practices in English-Medium Instruction (EMI) research (Moncada-Comas, & Sabaté-Dalmau, in press). We examine an interaction of a lecturer and his 21 students in an engineering class at a Catalan university. Drawing from video/audio-recorded classroom interactions, interviews, logs and visual materials, we argue that the EMI lecturer's praxis hinges on the use of multimodal-competence repertoires (non-verbal cues involving materiality, kinesics and positionality) and of multiple technology-based learning channels (Internet sources), for particular pedagogical functions. We show that his multimodal and multichannel lecturing intersects with his plurilingual practices (e.g., his monitored local-language(s) use), which become key to help students with insufficient English-language competence to access disciplinary content. Overall, our case study reveals that the combination of semiotic/kinesic modes and multichannel strategies with meaningful use of shared local languages makes “doing education” successful, without jeopardising the attainment of the required content and English-language level. This contributes to the exploration of how multimodal, multichannel and plurilingual practices interplay in effective classroom interactions, and of the affordances of our framework for the design and applicability of EMI pedagogies that consider all language ecologies in non-English speaking universities.

Plurilingual practices in Higher Education: An analysis of student perceptions from a South African University

This study describes student perspectives on the teaching and learning of a newly introduced University language acquisition course. It identifies three basic components of teaching and learning, namely teaching approaches, teaching and learning resources, and assessment of learning. The study focuses on how students perceive these basic components of teaching and learning by investigating how 1st-year students at a university in South Africa perceive the teaching and learning of the Sesotho First Additional Language (FAL) course (a newly introduced course in the university). Hence the objectives of this study are to establish the views of 1st-year Sesotho FAL students regarding the teaching approaches used by the lecturers presenting the course; the teaching and learning resources used in the course; and the quality of assessments applied in the course. Guided by complex dynamic systems theory, the study employs a survey methodology. A questionnaire comprising both close-ended belief statements as well as open-ended statements for students to respond to was administered to 51 study participants purposefully selected. Quantitative data were analysed using IBM SPSS, while qualitative data were analysed by the researchers themselves. Results emerging from the data reveal that 1st-year students generally find their lecturers’ teaching approaches and assessment methods satisfactory; however, they perceive the teaching and learning resources used by their lecturers in teaching Sesotho as inadequate. This finding points to the need for further dialogue broadly on the quality of teaching and learning, quality of assessment criteria and the availability of teaching and learning resources provided for presenting newly introduced courses in higher education institutions (HEIs); and specifically on the level of preparation of lecturers in these courses tasked with the teaching and learning.

Skills needed for telecollaboration in a multilingual environment: framework and task

In this article, we propose a framework of skills for telecollaboration in a plurilingual environment. It can be used by language teachers in higher education to prepare students for telecollaboration, using plurilingual practices and digital resources. The framework we have designed is anchored in a humanistic conception of education (Maslow & Rogers, 1971; Ryan & Deci, 2017). More specifically, we place the skill of collaborating at distance (Henri & Lundgren-Cayrol, 2003; Daele & Charlier, 2006) at the very centre of the telecollaboration skill. Digital literacies (Ollivier et al., 2018) and plurilingual practices (CARAP, 2012; REFIC, 2019) complete the skills framework. An example of a task, which relies on the framework, is proposed. The task is intended for engineering students and doctoral students from two French higher education institutions.

Language mixing and its discontents in 16th-century France

Plurilingualism – understood as the ability of an individual speaker to use more than one language – continues to attract both praise and blame in modern European metalinguistic debate. An individual’s ability to harness the full range of their linguistic competence for the purposes of communication, without maintaining firm distinctions between the languages to which they have access, is now celebrated in English-speaking educational contexts under the term ‘translanguaging’, and this type of plurilingual practice also underpins the Council of Europe’s framework for language learning. Lay commentators, on the other hand, are often suspicious of those using more than one language, particularly when such individuals are immigrants. This lay attitude can be traced back to an early modern preoccupation with language mixing, which was invariably viewed negatively, unlike plurilingual competence that respected and policed clear distinctions between learned languages and vernaculars. Examples from late medieval French farces and the works of François Rabelais, Innocent Gentillet and Henri Estienne demonstrate that language mixing, typically associated with the desire to obfuscate or claim unearned social status or economic advantage, was consistently condemned, despite a readiness to celebrate a learned individual’s plurilingual competence.

Family, school, and crossroads

In this article, we analyse the language regimentation of multilingual repertoires and plurilingual practices of young people of Moroccan origin in three different areas of Spain – Barcelona, Galicia, and Madrid. By focusing on the family and the school as two highly interconnected settings (Heller, 2012) which have an impact on their socialisation trajectories and on their development of functional bi/multilingualism – and, thus, on their linguistic practices – we consider, on the one hand, how these young people position themselves regarding multilingualism and the conception of a local and transnational plurilingual speaker and, on the other, how they invest their linguistic repertoire in the transnational space or what Hornberger (2005) calls the ‘implementational spaces’ of multilingual practices. Following a sociolinguistic and discursive critical analysis of the data collected (ethnographic data, the results of several didactic activities, focus groups and interviews), the results point out how family and school discourses surrounding multilingualism contribute to maintaining a situation of multilingualism, which includes both the heritage languages and the institutional and national languages and varieties. Moreover, the results show the ways these plurilingual youth navigate this multilingualism but also how they reconstruct it by deploying hybrid and creative practices.

Plurilingual practice in language teacher education

Abstract Despite decades of research supporting the pedagogic value of learners’ plurilingual resources to their linguistic and academic development, pre-service teachers frequently arrive at university inculcated in ‘target language only’ practices underpinned by monoglossic ideologies. The challenge for teacher education is to productively disrupt quotidian beliefs about language beliefs and prompt reconsideration of future classroom practices. Drawing on the work of the Douglas Fir Group (2016), this paper explores the identities, beliefs and values of two student-teachers as they emerged over the length of an innovative English-German pedagogic project on plurilingualism. The project involved German student-teachers developing a language portrait project for Grade 6 students; student-teachers using project data for undergraduate assignments; and English MA students interviewing young learners about their language portraits via videoconference. The videoconference provided young learners further opportunities to use their plurilingual resources and MA students with data for assignments on identity and investment. Working with DFG’s framework (2016), we examine the interplay of the meso- and macro-dimensions of the larger project’s design and the sometimes contradictory indexing of values and identities within and across activities. Analysis reveals that design choices sometimes unintentionally reinforced linguistic ideologies inconsistent with the project’s objectives, though these conflicts also led student-teachers to unexpected insights. We close with personal reflections on the implications of the first iteration of this design-based research project for the advancement of plurilingual pedagogies in teacher education.

Décrire les plurilinguismes en France. Les pratiques langagières familiales des élèves alloglottes et allophones

Starting from the need to think about the didactics of French in a way that includes all plurilingual pupils in the ordinary classroom, the present contribution proposes to identify the family language practices of 169 plurilingual pupils, composed of alloglots born in France (Gouaïch 2018) and allophones. The results show that while the plurilingual practices of alloglots share several general characteristics with those of allophones, they differ in several more specific respects.

Conscience collective et autoconscience dans l’enseignement / apprentissage du français langue seconde et de scolarisation : quand l’interculturel et le plurilinguisme sont en jeu

This article explores the issue of the collective consciousness and self-consciousness in teaching and learning foreign languages. A review of the literature on the current issues of interculturality and plurilingualism in relation to the notions of consciousness and self-consciousness is first detailed. The issue raised allows us to question the impact of this consideration in terms of the consequences of this work on class dynamics. In fact, can the awareness and self-awareness of learners regarding intercultural and plurilingual practices exist outside of a co-construction with other learners, with the teacher? The research methodology is based on an analysis of interactions in the language class which brings into play these intercultural and plurilingual approaches (resulting from the LISTIAC and FLSCAN projects). It reports significant results on the co-construction of consciousness and emerging self-consciousness in the language class about the singular universals of languages and cultures. The discussion shows the value of a collective, and no longer purely personal understanding (for the learner) of consciousness and self-awareness of these plurilingual and cultural experiences.

Plurilingual STEAM and School Lunches for Learning?

In Japan, where there is a bias toward English-only in foreign language education, there are also grassroots efforts to introduce greater plurality in the classroom. However, introducing diverse languages and cultures into the classroom can lead to folklorization, the delivering of essentialized information in pre-packaged formats, which can potentially delegitimize other languages and cultures. This contribution examines a collaborative integrative plurilingual STEAM practice at an elementary school in Western Japan. In the ‘school lunches project,' the children experience various international cuisine, leading up to which they would engage with related languages and cultures through collaboratively produced plurilingual videos and museum-like exhibits of cultural artifacts. The interdisciplinary, hands-on, experiential learning within this project helped the children to develop an investigative stance toward linguistic and cultural artifacts, nurture a deeper awareness of languages and openness to diversity, foster reflexivity, and encourage interdisciplinary engagement.

SCRIPTS ON LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPES: A MARKER OF HYBRID IDENTITY IN URBAN AREAS OF PAKISTAN

Background and Purpose: Scripts have strong relationship with religion, culture, and identity. This research was conducted to analyze how choice of different language scripts indicates identity crisis by observing placement, size, and preference of one code over the other. Furthermore, it also demonstrates the existence of plurilingual practices on linguistic landscapes.
 
 Methodology: The relationship of scripts with culture and religion was analyzed by following the theoretical framework of semiotics given by Scollon and Scollon (2003) and Huebner (2006). Data was collected through photographs of linguistic landscapes and passersby interviews. Altogether, a corpus of 1064 photographs was collected from three cities in Pakistan (i.e Rawalpindi, Islamabad & Wah Cantt) and 10 passersby were interviewed.
 
 Findings: Data analysis reveals some distinctive linguistic modifications in shop signs and billboards; including deviation in spellings, transliteration, linguistic hybridity, vocabulary, visual representation of language, lack of knowledge of Urdu vocabulary, acceptance of English vocabulary as part of Urdu language and use of sub-standard English vocabulary.
 
 Contribution: The research concludes that erroneous use of language and transliteration practices cause hybrid hybridity. Moreover, considering Urdu alternatives as an oddity, along with inability to retrieve Urdu vocabulary are major challenges for policy makers to promote and implement Urdu language policies.
 
 Keywords: Linguistic landscape, plurilingualism, script and identity, transliteration, translanguaging, linguistic hybridity.
 
 Cite as: Atta, A. (2021). Scripts on linguistic landscapes: A marker of hybrid identity in urban areas of Pakistan. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 6(2), 58-96. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss2pp58-96

Launching a solidarity campaign: Technology-enhanced project-based language learning to promote entrepreneurial education and social awareness

To promote social consciousness and a sense of responsibility, educational proposals organised around the principles of technology-enhanced project-based language learning (Dooly & Sadler,2016) should engage students in a process of reflecting upon and responding to crucial social issues. Thus, in this paper we will present a project carried out by two groups of primary students who launched a solidarity campaign to collect money for four Syrian children living in a refugee camp in Greece. The project was implemented in a cross-disciplinary Arts and Crafts class taught through English and resulted in significant outputs in English (those addressed to the Syrian children) and in Catalan (those targeted at the local community). First, we outline the student-led project and then we analyse some fragments of student plurilingual practices during the project development that demonstrate their learning gains. Our findings reveal that our meaningful contextualised cross-disciplinary project favoured the natural integration of multiple skills, competences, and field knowledge form various disciplines while promoting a sense of social consciousness and empathy. First, it enabled children to put their plurilingual competence into play and take decisions regarding language choices to meet particular communicative objectives. Second, it contributed to the acquisition of 21st century knowledge, competence, and skills, while helping the learners gain social values. Third, it engaged learners in processes of problem solving, decision making and creative thinking that lead to the development of entrepreneurial competencies. To conclude we argue that when young learners are given responsibilities and opportunities to take up socially relevant challenges learning becomes meaningful for them and those around them.