I was looking at the website of the Centre of Multilingualism in Education from London Metropolitan University and found Jim Cummins’s PowerPoint presentation about Multilingualism and Equity and here’s my favourite slide:

PS. For the complete PPT presentation, click here.

AlexEnglish
Bartira Almeida
Shinigagne
Adriana Soares
Andreia Flores
Fran Gaspareto

I’ve recently arrived from Brazil where I spent all the summer holidays with my family and friends. I really needed to get away from this frantic routine. The school is still being refurbished and the last two days were a mix of dust, messy rooms and endless ICT jobs to be done. I will truly come back to real life tomorrow, when children restart school. Until the next summer holidays I will continue to dream with the blue skies of southern Brazil and the marvellous sunset of Guaiba river, in Porto Alegre.

Last week I took my class to the British Film Institute for a session on Film Narrative. According to the National Strategies website:

Recent research in this area (Marshall, 1997; Robinson, 1997; Browne, 1999; Parker, 1999; Oldham, 1999; Sefton-Green & Parker, 2000) has suggested that moving image media may have an important role to play in augmenting existing literacy teaching programmes. Robinson has shown how the concept of narrative is a key bridge spanning cognitive processes associated with print and visual media. Her notion of language, culture and the mind coalescing around powerful visual narratives, in much the same way the mainstream policymakers have – perhaps erroneously – seen curriculum subject areas revolving around literacy, is an important contribution to the debate. Equally, Browne has shown how television and video are key components in the toolkit children use on their journey towards decoding the abstractedness of written language. Collaborative research from King’s College, London and the BFI (Parker, 1999; Oldham, 1999) has not only corroborated work such as Robinson’s and Browne’s, it has also suggested that a virtuous cycle of learning outcomes is possible when using moving image media whereby both print literacy and cineliteracy (FEWG, 1999) are fostered simultaneously. The dimension of ICT compounds these claims by showing how new child-centred software packages are attempting to locate editing within a language-based paradigm (Sefton-Green & Parker, 2000).

In other words, children benefit from a visual approach when working on their literacy skills. Not to mention that they love it. It’s also worth spending some time reading the section Reading Images, Writing Words. In our session at the BFI, we watched three very different short films and reflected on the importance of sound, camera angles and repetition as a technique to make a story more humorous. Below is two of the short films we watched. Have fun!

I’ve used it in a staff meeting where staff were able to carry out a self-assessment on the strengths and weaknesses in teaching Science. I’ve also used it several times during my Numeracy lessons – great for lesson starters and self-assessment at the end of it not to mention during the Spanish lessons. Children were very excited to used the voting devices to say what means of transportation they usually use to come to school.

The voting system has some technical hiccups that need to be sorted but nothing that discourage you to use it. The school where I work is part of a pilot project that should be finished by December.

To find out more about Learner Response Systems, check out the websites below:
1. Ollie Bray on Active Expression
2. Promethean Active Expression
3. REVEAL project

These numbers reminded me of what Peter Trudgill wrote in one of his books. According to him, there are three different approaches to deal with children like the ones mentioned above or those who do not speak Standard English.

The first approach is the ‘elimination of nonstandard speech’. In this approach every attempt is made in the schools to prevent children from speaking their native nonstandard varieties. Standard English, on the other hand, is presented as ‘correct’ and ‘good’ – the model to be aimed at. Linguists believe this approach to be wrong for several reasons:
1. Firstly, it is wrong psychologically. Language is not simple a means of communicating messages but it is also very important as a symbol of identity and group membership. By infering that their language or nonstandard variety is inferior, we are saying that they are inferior.
2. Secondly, it is socially wrong. It may appear to imply that particular social groups are less valuable than others. This is particularly dangerous when the group stigmatized is that of lower-class black children and the one which is the model is that of white middle-class adult teachers.
3. Finally, this approach is practically wrong because it just does not work. The pressures of group identification and peer-group are very strong. Children do not grow up speaking like their parents, and they certainly will not grow up speaking like their teachers – their speech patterns are those of their friends.

The second approach is called ‘bidialectalism’ and has received intense support of linguists. This approach teaches that the individual has the right to continue using a nonstandard dialect at home, with friends and in certain circumstances at school. But it also advocates that children should be taught standard English as a school language, and as the language of reading and writing. By considering both varieties as different and distinct, children would hopefully develop the ability to switch from one variety to another when the situation demands.

The third and final approach suggested by Trudgill is called ‘appreciation of dialect differences’. This view states that if children suffer because of their nonstandard language, this is due to the attitudes that society, and perhaps teachers in particular, have towards language of this type. In this case, it is attitudes that should change and not the language. Children should be taught standard English but an effort should be made to change the society’s attitude, which in many cases, is utopian and unrealistic.

I personally believe that the bidialectalism approach is the most realistic and humane. Children not only need to have the structural knowledge of their language(s), but also the sociopragmatic skills necessary to use it (them) appropriately.

According to Rita, areas that need further research include:

1. Historical aspects of multilingualism;

2. Multilingualism in business and the use of linguae francae;

3. Sociolinguistics dimensions, such as majority language speakers use (parts of) languages of minorities;

4. Multilingualism in the individual, especially how 4 to 14 year olds acquire two, three or more languages as well as learners in a more advanced age; continued studies on the acquisition of a third language (or fourth language) and the effects on those languages already mastered;

5. Computer mediated communication, investigating, for example, which methods non-native speakers of English, who dominate the internet, use to be understood worldwide, how problems in expressing oneself are overcome and which approach(es) is (are) taken towards cultural assumptions.

Well, I have to say that it was a very intense and tiring week but it was worth giving up my last week of holidays. Besides keeping up-to-date with the new findings in my area and making new contacts, it also motivated me to keep on reading and writing. It is quite easy to leave it for second plan once you’ve finished (part of) your postgraduate studies and have the hectic life of a primary school teacher (which, by the way, restarts next week.)

The symposium I attended in the afternoon was also related with language learning and technology. Teletandem Brazil is government-funded project from Sao Paulo State University (Unesp) which promotes collaborative language learning between students from Unesp interested in learning languages such as English, Italian, Spanish and German and native speakers of these languages who are interested in learning Portuguese. The difference between traditional tandem and this new concept of teletandem is the presence of a teacher mediator and obviously the digital context. It was very interesting to note how new language learning strategies are being used in this new digital context as well as the computer mediated communication that takes place in this conversation.