Bi-/Multi-lingualism and the History of Language Learning and Teaching (Special Issue of 'Language & History') (original) (raw)
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The history of language learning and teaching
Paedagogica Historica, 2020
the History of Language Learning and teaching as a Field of Study In this introduction, we set ourselves two tasks. First, as this three-volume collection marks the culmination of our AHRC-funded project 'Towards a History of Modern Foreign Language Teaching and Learning' (AH/J012475/1), we ref lect on the emergence of an international community of scholarship focused on what has come to be called-following McLelland and Smith (2014a)-the History of Language Learning and Teaching (HoLLT), and we describe how this is becoming established as a newly emerging interdisciplinary, intercultural and plurilinguistic field of enquiry. Second, we outline what the present collection contributes to this developing field, and how it helps indicate future directions of research. These three volumes, following on from McLelland and Smith (2014a) and Smith and McLelland (2018a), represent the first time that a substantial collection of research studies in the field of history of language learning and teaching has been published in an English-dominant country. Relevant studies have appeared in several countries over the years, most consistently in the area of French as a second/ foreign language, but there has not, until recently, been a recognizable discourse community of historians of language learning and teaching communicating together across both language and geographical borders. As we explain more fully below, there are biases of focus over the three volumes which ref lect their origins in a UK-based research network project, albeit one with strong connections to Continental Europe. Almost all the chapters started life as papers at a conference we organized in July 2014 at the University of Nottingham. 2 The conference was the last of a series of three events which were designed to bring together potentially interested UK-based academics and teacher educators in the field of modern foreign language teaching with some of those we knew in Continental Europe who were already doing relevant historical research. The conference followed on from two smaller workshops in the previous two years (at the Universities of Nottingham and Warwick, respectively), which themselves
Multilingual Practices in Language History: English and Beyond
2017
Multilingualism and multiculturalism are burning topics in today's societies. Peoples, languages and cultures coming into contact with each other can provoke confusion and concern. However, although the current situation in Europe, for example, tends to be viewed as alarmingly sudden, cultural and language contact and multilingualism are nothing new. Multilingualism in the past was not limited in place and time: we find evidence of it throughout medieval Europe, and in other periods and regions as well. Multilingual societies were composed of multilingual individuals who used more than one language in their daily lives, even within a single utterance. This is manifest in their writing. The surviving written evidence offers us access to code-switching and other multilingual practices of the past, the topic to which this volumeand a growing number of othersis dedicated. A key term in discussing multilinguals and their communicative practices is code-switching, which has been defined in a number of different ways. We quote Winford (2003: 14): "the alternate use of two languages (or dialects) within the same stretch of speech, often within the same sentence"and Poplack (1980: 583): "the alternation of two languages within a single discourse, sentence or constituent". Both define code-switching as involving two linguistic codes, although there can be more. Moreover, Winford mentions speech, as codeswitching was originally studied as a feature of spoken interaction, whilst Poplack highlights the linguistic, structural context within which the switch takes place. Since historical linguists only work with written records of language use, we have a slightly different emphasis: "the co-occurrence of two or more languages in a single communicative event" (Pahta and Nurmi 2006: 203). Broader definitions have also been made by othersconsider Heller (1988: 1): "the use of more than one language in the course of a single communicative episode". The similarities between these definitions, though, hide the variation and variability of
Language in Society, 2011
We all know our schools; we grew up in their classrooms and, to a large extent, are a product of them. Nevertheless, once that stage of our education is over, we are not allowed to relive it, slipping through the doorway to sit down at a desk and watch what happens. The appeal of all educational ethnographies, including the one presented by Adrian Blackledge and Angela Creese in Multilingualism, resides to a large extent in this potential to allow us, from the standpoint of our past experience, to discover current schools and classrooms, and to do so in the (sometimes cacophonous) voices of their protagonists. In the present case, these voices, moreover, mobilise resources in languages other than that of English, the predominant tongue with which they become enmeshed. Multilingualism presents a sociolinguistic study of four interlocking case studies in four English cities, and eight complementary schools, opening up a scenario that for many readers might be a novel one, that of complementary schools created for "Teaching of the Language and Culture of Origin".
The continua of biliteracy and the bilingual educator: Educational linguistics in practice
Bilingualism and language pedagogy, 2004
The continua model of biliteracy offers a framework in which to situate research, teaching, and language planning in linguistically diverse settings; bilingual teacher education represents a conjunction of all three of these and hence, a good candidate for applying the continua model. This paper uses selected experiences in language teacher education as practised at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education to illustrate the potential of the continua model as heuristic in continually (re)writing the bilingual or language educator's knowledge base in response to the demands of educational policy and practice. A series of vignettes serves as a means for exploring dilemmas confronting bilingual (and language) educators and ways in which the continua model might shape a response: the global/local dilemma -global social, cultural, and political trends as contexts for biliteracy; the standard/nonstandard dilemma -media of biliteracy as reflected in evolving views of language and literacy in the world; the language/content dilemma -enquirybased teacher education as an approach to the development of biliteracy; and the language/culture/identity dilemmateachers' and learners' identities and cultures as they relate to biliteracy content. The paper concludes with a few comments on bilingual educators as researchers, teachers, and language planners and on the need, now more than ever, for bilingual educators to be advocates.
A Brief History of Language Teaching
The purpose of this article is to give some context to the current discussions abounding in language teaching classrooms around the world. I think it is essential to judge the most recently marketed approaches in the light of what has gone before. And following Thomas Kuhn, who wrote the seminal The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, my suggestion is that we integrate and account for, rather than sweep away, past approaches.
Methods and masters: Multilingual teaching in 16th-century Louvain
CAUCE. Revista internacional de Filología, Comunicación y sus Didácticas, 2017
Resumen: En el siglo XVI se practicaban varias lenguas en Flandes, especialmente en la ciudad universitaria de Lovaina y en Am-beres, centro económico de los Países Bajos españoles. El multilingüismo que se practicaba era por un lado un multilingüismo 'verti-cal', implicando el estudio de las tres lenguas 'sagradas' (hebreo, griego, latín); este tipo de estudio se concretizó con la fundación del Collegium Trilingue de Lovaina (1517). Por otro lado, estaba muy difundido un multilingüismo 'horizontal', que implicaba las lenguas vernáculas, como el español, el francés y el italiano; este tipo de multilingüismo se explica por el ascenso de la clase comerciante. La presente contribución analiza la documentación disponible (sobre los maestros de lengua y los instrumentos didácticos) y rastrea los fac-tores contextuales que influían en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras en Flandes, con particular atención a Lovaina. Palabras clave: Historia de la enseñanza de lenguas: Instrumentos didácticos; Multilingüismo (español, francés, italiano); Flandes; Collegi-um Trilingue de Lovaina; siglo XVI Abstract: In 16th-century Flanders, various languages were practiced, especially in the university town of Louvain and the city of Antwerp, the economic heart of the Southern Low Countries. On the one hand, the multilingualism to be observed there was a 'vertical' one: it concerned the study of the three 'sacred' languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Latin), and is typically exemplified by the creation of the Collegium Trilingue in Louvain (1517). On the other hand, there was a widespread 'horizontal' multilingualism, involving the vernaculars (e.g., French, Italian, Span-ish) and serving the needs of the ascending merchant class. The present paper surveys the extant documentation (language masters, didactic tools), and investigates the contextual factors underlying the teaching and learning of foreign languages in Flanders, with a focus on Louvain.