Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Thanks
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I Creating a good environment for language learning
- II Being effective in the classroom
- III Teaching large classes
- IV Teaching language skills and systems
- V Teaching language without textbooks
- VI Teaching language with textbooks
- VII Helping students achieve their potential
- VIII Linking the school to the outside world
- IX Supporting yourself and others
- Glossary
- Index
8 - Using different languages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Thanks
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I Creating a good environment for language learning
- II Being effective in the classroom
- III Teaching large classes
- IV Teaching language skills and systems
- V Teaching language without textbooks
- VI Teaching language with textbooks
- VII Helping students achieve their potential
- VIII Linking the school to the outside world
- IX Supporting yourself and others
- Glossary
- Index
Summary
The punishments [for speaking local languages] include washing dining-hall plates, weeding, scrubbing, writing lines and wearing labels that say ‘I will not speak vernacular in school again’.
Beth Erling, Lina Adinolfi and Anna Kristina HultgreenThe short version
1 Students’ mother tongues need to be seen as a resource and opportunity rather than as a problem. This is especially important as national and international languages become increasingly dominant.
2 There should be greater tolerance towards using L1 in the classroom, acknowledging the benefits which it can have for acquiring L2.
3 Three potential ways to promote different languages in your classroom are code switching, translanguaging and using bilingual teaching assistants.
4 Creating materials and resources, both for classroom and wider use, is another important way of promoting minority languages in schools.
5 Having a more open and welcoming approach to different languages in the classroom also presents challenges, but these challenges can be managed.
Introduction
1 What language, or languages, are used in your school in:
• the classroom?
• the playground?
• staff meetings?
2 Are these the same languages which are spoken in the wider community where the students live?
3 Do you think the language policy in your school is fair and equitable? If you could change it, would you? How?
4 Below is a list of strategies which can be used to encourage students’ use of local languages in the classroom. What do you think they mean? Have you ever used these strategies?
Multilingual classrooms
In challenging circumstances, especially in conflict and post-conflict areas, language can be both a threat and an opportunity. It can be a threat because it is commonly used as a tool of division and ‘othering’, and to prioritize a particular ethnic, social or cultural group over others who live in the same community. Languages can also be an opportunity as they can give people life chances, and promote communication between disparate groups.
As such, a school's policy towards language, perhaps more than any other single factor, can affect students’ learning outcomes. When students are forced to use a language which is unfamiliar or which they are not proficient in, their educational progress and experiences are negatively affected.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Teaching in Challenging Circumstances , pp. 51 - 56Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021