A language education blog by Melissa J. Enns
Recently, I did a presentation on Ofelia García's (2008) encyclopedia entry on "Multilingual Language Awareness and Teacher Education." A few of García's points really stuck out to me as crucial not just to language education, but to education as a whole. With that in mind, I decided to share them along with some of my own thoughts. The …
Continue reading Multilingual Language Awareness
In my last post (Translanguaging: Establishing Some Foundations), I highlighted the monolingual bias in language education and discussed the importance of being strategic in employing translanguaging strategies, including through having clear guidelines for when it is appropriate. However, I feel that I did not adequately address the question of why it is important to challenge the monolingual principle in …
Can translanguaging be used as a productive pedagogical tool in the language classroom?
In my last post (Interacting with Linguistic Capital and Teacher Agency), I alluded to the balance that language teachers must find between working within the bounds of educational policy and making accommodatons for inclusion, perhaps at times pushing the boundaries. I feel that the topic merits further attention.
Previously, I have mentioned processes which lead to the valuing of a standard dialect of a national language over other languages and dialects...
So far, we have been looking at teacher identity and critical self reflection; now let’s zoom out to look at some of the “big picture” influences that shape the content and atmosphere in the language classroom. As I wrote last time, language is not neutral. Corson (1993) is quick to note that there is a …
