[lg policy] call: Multilingualism - Chance and Challenge

[Harold Schiffman]

Multilingualism - Chance and Challenge

Date: 21-Jun-2012 - 22-Jun-2012
Location: University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Contact: Nancy Morys
Contact Email: < click here to access email >
Meeting URL: http://www.mehrsprachigkeit-als-chance.eu

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics

Meeting Description:

Multilingualism - Chance and Challenge. Fourth international
conference on challenges and opportunities of multilingualism in the
fields of school and teacher training

Multilingualism is both a desirable aim in terms of educational policy
and common reality in European classrooms of all levels.
Linguistically and culturally heterogeneous groups of learners are
perfectly normal. Moreover, social mobility in a shared European
common market, immigration and intercultural diversity as well as
different learner biographies has an impact on classroom reality. For
instance, in (language) classrooms different types of learners share
the same courses: those who speak the language as a mother tongue,
those who have acquired the language as a second language and those
who are beginners. Frequently, a great number of immigrant languages
are spoken at school, which on the one hand characterize and on the
other enrich the students’ identity and everyday lessons.

Concerning multilingualism, teachers as well as students face
unprecedented challenges. At the same time, multilingualism provides
undreamed chances for a lively, real-life and functional language
classroom. In order to use this opportunity, reflections on and
concepts of an emergent ‘methodology of teaching multilingualism’ are
required. As traditional teaching theories and ideas about the
acquisition of a foreign language lack answers to this, we have to
find new ways to cope with today’s multilingual and multicultural
heterogeneity adequately. Firstly, a language teaching methodology has
to draw its attention to these new phenomena scientifically, and
secondly, needs to redefine its self-conception. For this purpose, it
is necessary to start an interdisciplinary and transnational dialogue
that includes and develops different experiences in terms of teaching,
linguistics and language methodology: country-specific empirical
research findings, case studies and lesson reports are a subject of
interest, as well as first attempts in order to seize the chances of
multilingualism by using specific methods in the learners´ acquisition
process and teacher training.

The main objective of this conference is to enable a focused exchange
between students, researchers and practitioners in schools and
universities about educational approaches, research activities and
projects related to multilingualism in terms of first, second and
foreign language learning.

Colleagues from universities and schools from 10 different countries
will give lectures on the different approaches to cope with individual
and societal multilingualism which have been developed in their
countries and regions.


http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-702.html
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