26.2596, Review: Applied Ling; Socioling: Grommes, Hu (2014)

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Subject: 26.2596, Review: Applied Ling; Socioling: Grommes, Hu (2014)

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Date: Fri, 22 May 2015 17:46:56
From: Anna Krulatz [anna.m.krulatz at hist.no]
Subject: Plurilingual Education

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=35996817


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-3216.html

EDITOR: Patrick  Grommes
EDITOR: Adelheid  Hu
TITLE: Plurilingual Education
SUBTITLE: Policies – practices – language development
SERIES TITLE: Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity 3
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Anna M Krulatz, University of Utah

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“Plurilingual Education. Policies – practices – language development” edited
by Patrick Grommes and Adelheid Hu is a volume of the Hamburg Studies in
Linguistic Diversity published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. The
contribution reflects on the role of linguistic diversity in shaping
educational and individual dimensions in contemporary societies and is divided
into three sections: section one focusing on educational policies in European
and other settings; section two devoted to multilingual practices in school
settings; and section three exploring the relationship between plurilingual
practices and language development. 

‘Plurilingualism and the challenges in education’ by Daniel Coste discusses
the transition from foreign language instruction to plurilingual education
initiated by the Modern languages projects of the Council of Europe. Within
the new approach, plurality of languages is emphasized as a positive social
and individual dimension and expected to guide school objectives and
linguistic education across the subjects. This mandates that in addition to a
developed proficiency in the main language of the school, individuals develop
individual linguistic repertoires of languages and language varieties. Maximum
proficiency in all languages is not expected; rather, it is stressed that
these linguistic repertoires are subject to individual variation. At the same
time, the role of the language of schooling in promoting plurilingualism is
seen as central and can be augmented if it is used to support transversalities
between different subjects, by, for instance, focusing on different genres or
formats of communication. Overall, the new approach is based in higher
awareness of students’ varied backgrounds, recognition of the linguistic
rights of speakers of languages and language varieties other than the main
language of the community, and the recognition of the many benefits of a
plurilingual education. 

In ‘The Council of Europe’s Language Education Policy Profile,’ David Little
presents an overview of the history of the education policy in Europe with a
special focus on adult learners, and explains how Language Education Policy
Profiles are developed for member states, regions and cities. Since its
beginnings in the 1950s, the Council of Europe has promoted both cultural and
linguistic diversity and seen language learning as an essential component in
development of inclusive societies. More recently, it has also embraced the
concept of plurilingualism, exhibiting an understanding that a functional
competence in a foreign language(s) allows one to participate in
cross-cultural communications, and stressing the equal rights of different
languages (i.e. majority, minority, foreign) and language varieties. The
second part of the chapter describes two examples of the Language Education
Policy Profiles (LEPP), one from Austria and another from Sheffield. The
author explains the general objectives and principles of LEPP and illustrates
its function with the two aforementioned examples. The chapter concludes with
a summary of LEPP Austria and LEPP Sheffield, and a brief general discussion
of the advantages and the challenges of the LEPP process.

The next chapter, titled ‘Australian Language Policy and the design of a
national curriculum for languages’ and written by Martina Möllering, discusses
the development of national language policy and its impact on a national
language curriculum in Australia in an effort to support and develop
Australia’s multilingualism. The chapter stresses that even though Australia
has had a language policy that addresses foreign language teaching for the
last twenty years, its impact has been limited. Three of five existing
language planning reports are discussed in a greater detail, namely the
National Policy on Language (1987), the Australian Language and Literacy
Policy (1991), and the National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian
Schools (1994). The contribution also provides an overview of language
teaching requirements by state and territory, student enrollments by language,
and percentage of students studying foreign languages at both primary and
secondary levels. It then moves on to describe the development of the national
Australian Curriculum for languages, including two key documents that guided
its development (i.e. the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young
Australians and the Shape of the Australian Curriculum), its rationale and
design, central focus on Asian languages and cultures, learner profiles,
proposed learner pathways (program options) for different groups of language
learners, and implementation. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of
the main challenges to the implementation of the national curriculum for
languages, namely diversity of languages offered and the adoption of the
curriculum by states and territories, including the provision of resources
such as trained teachers. 

‘Acts of identity in the continuum from multilingual practices to language
policy’ by Sabine Ehrhart is devoted to theoretical issues in ecolinguistics
and action research, arguing that the degree of ethnolinguistic diversity
varies along a continuum from implicit to explicit. These theoretical
considerations are illustrated with two examples of historical overviews and
ethnographic observations conducted in multilingual schools, one in Luxembourg
and the other one in New Caledonia. The author recommends several points and
discourse strategies that can be used as guidelines when conducting
ethnographic observations of multilingual classrooms, including
code-switching; translanguaging; translation; discussion of relationship
between language, identity and political power; plurilingual competences; and
language and community planning.  Having considered the relationship between
multilingual strategies and other social structures, the author concludes that
while multilingualism in Luxembourg’s schools gravitates towards the explicit
extreme of the continuum, New Caledonia is an extreme case of implicit
ethnolinguistic diversity.  

The next chapter, ‘Minority language instruction in Berlin and Brandenburg.
Overview and case studies of Sorbian, Polish, Turkish and Chinese,’ is
contributed by Carol W. Pfaff, Jingfei Liang, Meral Dollnick, Marta Rusek and
Lisa Heinzmann. As the title suggests, the chapter is devoted to minority
language instruction in linguistically diverse Germany, focusing on an
indigenous minority language (Sorbian), two immigrant minority languages
(Polish and Turkish) and an international language of wider communication and
economic relevance (Chinese). The chapter briefly presents the demographics of
Germany, with a special focus on Berlin and Brandenburg and the speaker
populations of the languages to which the chapter is devoted, and then gives
an overview of the European and German language policies that specifically
affect the instruction of minority languages, namely the European Charter for
Regional or Minority Languages, the 1977 Council of the European Communities
Directive 77/486/EEC, the Lisbon Strategy, and the Guide for the Development
of Language Education Policies in Europe. It then moves on to describe
different minority and foreign language education options and enrollment in
Berlin and Brandenburg; the options range from foreign language instruction,
two-way immersion programs, and content based instruction to
“Begegnungssprachen” programs which focus on developing greater creativity and
linguistic and cultural awareness in linguistically diverse areas.  The
chapter then presents case studies of the four aforementioned languages and
available language instruction, giving a historical overview and describing
the current state of each. Overall, this contribution provides an excellent
example of linguistic diversity on a regional level, including legal
foundations, institutional support in primary, secondary and
post-secondary/adult education settings and practical outcomes of the language
policies. This chapter concludes the first section of the book.

The first chapter in part two of the book, which focuses on Multilingual
Practices, is titled ‘Dynamics and management of linguistic diversity in
companies and institutions of higher education. Results from the
DYLAN-project.’ The entry was contributed by Georges Lüdi and it discusses the
outcomes of a multi-team project which researched the interrelationships
between beliefs about multilingualism and multilingual practices in businesses
and institutions of higher education in different European countries. A mixed
methods approach was adapted combining analysis of official documents, job ads
and websites, interviews, descriptions of linguistic landscapes, and tape
recordings of multilingual and monolingual interactions in business and
education settings. The project attempted to answer specific questions
relating to multilingual beliefs and practices, including the feasibility of
creating a linguistically and culturally diverse yet cohesive Europe, the
rules governing language choices in the classroom and at work, and whether
multilingualism is sought because it is perceived as an asset and not simply a
solution imposed from above and a problem to be dealt with. The chapter points
to the use of multilingual repertoires as a factor affecting interaction in
the two settings under investigation and concludes that even though all study
participants agreed on the importance of the use English as a lingua franca,
it is when several languages are used simultaneously that the most efficient
construction of knowledge takes place.  

‘Discourse, representation and language practice: Negotiating plurilingual
identities and spaces’ by Sofia Stratilaki uses typological profiles and
constituent components of representations of plurilingual identity to examine
the extent to which language learning and use strategies are affected by
learners’ representations of language. The chapter opens with theoretical
considerations pertaining to social and individual representations present in
individuals with plurilingual and pluricultural competence (PPC) followed by a
brief overview of the usefulness of discourse analysis in the study of PPC.
Stratilaki’s own study examined how French-German learners in two
instructional settings in Saarbrücken and Buc employ their linguistic
repertoires to create social representations of plurilingual identity and
competence. The data, collected through informally recorded interviews,
suggest that bilinguals are often expected to have native-like competence in
both languages and that plurilingualism is perceived as an extension of
bilingualism. At the same time, the findings point out that plurilingualism is
believed to have a positive impact on language learning. In regard to language
practice and code switching, the author points out that they are impacted by
social factors and social evaluations. Overall, the chapter highlights the
complexity of plurilingual and pluricultural identity and competence, thus
supporting the dynamic model of plurilingualism; it also stresses the
importance of continued research on language uses and social representations
in multilinguals.  

‘“Because it is my life, and I’m the one who makes choices” – Newcomers in the
French education system and career guidance. What about their plurilingual
competence?’ by Timea Pickel and Christine Hélot is devoted to the impact of
the monolingual ideology and schooling prioritizing the acquisition of French
on plurilingual competence of young adult immigrants in France. Two young
newcomers to France were interviewed to collect data – a female from Russia
(15 years old upon arrival) and a male from Afghanistan (14 years old upon
arrival). The chapter presents the findings of the case studies in the light
of institutional documents regarding the educational rights and goals for the
newcomers in France and guidance counseling procedures used for all secondary
level students, stressing that these documents use negative terms such as
“linguistic handicap” and “linguistic deficits” to refer to non-French
students. The chapter describes the schooling of newcomers in France, pointing
out that these students are entitled to a one-year pull out program in French
(10-13 hours a week) and attend mainstream classes during the remaining hours
where they are expected to function without additional help from the teachers.
While learning the language of schooling (French) is seen as the main
priority, the students’ first language(s) are largely ignored. An important
point made throughout the chapter is that bi- and multilingualism in the
French context is an elitist privilege reserved for native French speakers who
wish to improve their competence in either a dominant world language or a
regional minority language; it is not supported for immigrants speaking low
status languages, who are perceived as linguistically incompetent, which in
turn reduces their career options.  

The next chapter, ‘The effects of language transfer as a resource in
instruction’ by Kerstin Göbel and Svenja Vieluf is a shortened version of
Göbel, Vieluf and Hesse’s (2010) ‘Die Sprachentransferunterstützung im
Deutsch- und Englishunterricht bei Schülerinnen und Schülern unterschiedlicher
Sprachlernerfahrung’ which was published in Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 55. It
focuses on the effectiveness of transfer-promoting instruction in the context
where German is the main language of schooling and English is taught as a
second language. The chapter opens with a brief overview of previous research
on the benefits of multilingualism in consecutive language acquisition
stressing the important role of the teacher in using language resources to
promote multilingualism in the classroom, specifically in regard to using
transfer strategies – both the language knowledge and learning strategies.
Next, the paper presents the results of an analysis of the data from a German
study on the English and German achievement of 9th graders (DESI, 2008) which
measured the use of instructional strategies that promote language transfer
and student achievement in German and English. The results suggest that while
few teachers use instruction that promotes language transfer, there is a
positive impact of such instruction in English classes.  Compared to native
speakers of German, there is  a stronger transfer effect for students speaking
a first language other than German in addition to speaking German as a second
language. The chapter concludes that teachers need to receive more training in
languages commonly spoken in the community as well as in transfer-promoting
instruction.

Section three of the book, ‘Language development,’ opens with ‘Effects of
biliteracy on third language reading proficiency, the example of
Turkish-German bilinguals’ by Dominique Rauch.  The chapter reports the
results of a study on the effects of literacy in L1 (Turkish) on reading
comprehension in English as a foreign language (a third language). The study
is based in Cummins’s interdependence hypothesis which assumes that skills
developed in a first (or second) language are transferred to consecutive
language(s), and stems from the concern about low reading competence levels of
immigrant students in Germany, in particular students of Turkish origin. It
measured reading proficiency in German, Turkish and English of 142 monolingual
(German) and 138 bilingual (Turkish and German) 9th graders in Hamburg against
the backdrop of general cognitive abilities, socioeconomic status, school
track, gender, oral bilingual language use and biliteracy in Turkish and
German. The most important finding is that oral bilingual language use does
not have a positive effect on literacy skills in the third language. On the
contrary, developed literacy skills in the first and second language are
positively correlated with the development of reading competence in a third
language. This finding is consistent with previous findings from studies in
America, Canada and Spain. As the author points out, the study has important
implications for first and second language support programs for immigrant
students. 

The second chapter in section three of the book, ‘L1 and L2 proficiency in
Hebrew English adolescent learners’ by Dorit Ravid and Galit Ginat-Heiman
explores the impact of proficiency in the first language on the development of
second language proficiency. Specifically, the authors focus on the
development of the lexicon and spoken and written skills in Hebrew as the
first language, and English as a second language. The chapter begins with an
overview of the current psycholinguistic theories that attempt to explain the
development of the spoken and written lexicon, including the Lexical
Restructuring Model, the Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis, and
Cummins’s Interdependence Hypothesis. It then describes the findings of a
study that compared the depth of knowledge of Hebrew-specific constructions
and of English morphosyntax and vocabulary in strong and weak readers. The
study used a series of spoken and written tasks in Hebrew and in English,
including confrontational naming, word order, English grammar, and oral
reading in English, and an emotions task, a passive voice task, an optional
morphology task, a machine task, a lexical derivation task and a cloze task in
Hebrew. The study concluded that poor readers were indeed poor second language
learners and that first and second language proficiency are closely related. 

The final contribution in the volume, ‘Developing a written lexicon in a
multilingual environment’ by Anna Llaurado and Liliana Tolchinsky, describes a
corpus study that examined the development of a written multilingual lexicon
from a cross-sectional perspective. The study was conducted in Spain in a
context where Catalan is used as the main language of schooling, with Spanish
as a co-official language and minority languages spoken in immigrant
households. The chapter first gives a brief sociolinguistic overview of
language policies and immigration in Catalonia, pointing to code switching as
a common phenomenon due to the linguistic diversity in the region. It then
describes the collection of the corpus data, which included a vocabulary
production task (writing down as many nouns as they could remember in
different semantic fields) and a text production task (six texts: a film
explanation, a film recommendation, telling a joke, a definition of a noun, a
definition of a verb, a definition of an adjective). The goal of the corpus
analysis was to assess the development of the written lexicon from 5 to 16
years of age. Contrary to their expectations, the authors found only limited
presence of foreign or Spanish forms in the written data. However, they did
note an increase in correct spelling in Catalan with age and school level. The
chapter concludes with implications for the study of multilingualism and
multilingual teaching practices, most notably calling for a more extensive
engagement of students’ multilingual competencies in the classroom.   

EVALUATION

Focusing on the role of plurilingualism in shaping contemporary societies, in
particular educational policies, multilingual practices in schools and
communities, and the development of multilingual competence, “Plurilingual
Education. Policies – practices – language development” is a welcome
publication. The volume makes an important contribution to the field of
plurilingual studies for several reasons. Most importantly, it emphasizes
plurilingualism and plurilingual communication as a common practice, placing
the individual at a central stage. This perspective resonates throughout the
chapters, several of which also make references to the European Commission’s
mandate that “Every European citizen should have meaningful communicative
competence in at least two other languages in addition to his or her mother
tongue” (2003, p. 1). What also stands out about the book is that the
contributions are relevant to recipients in different societal spheres, from
educators to policy makers and researchers. Unlike many current publications
that focus on plurilingualism, the volume actually contains quite a few
contributions of direct relevance to teachers working with multilingual
populations, e.g. the chapters by Möllering, Pickel and Hélot, and Göbel and
Vieluf. Implications for multi-language literacy development made in a few of
the chapters are also an asset. 

However, the volume is not without weaknesses. Most notably, with the
exception of three chapters (25% of the book), the contributions are devoted
almost exclusively to plurilingualism in European contexts, with frequent
references to the Council of Europe’s support of plurilingualism. This is
perhaps not surprising considering that the idea of the volume was conceived
in a series of lectures at the University of Hamburg. But the lack of balance
between the local, European focus and unrepresented global contexts of
multilingualism is a bit striking. Considering other recent publications, such
as “Becoming Multilingual,” which also narrowly focus on European contexts, a
more extensive discussion of plurilingualism as a global phenomenon would be
welcome.

Finally, it is crucial to point out that not all the contributions are equally
well-structured and easy to follow.  Whereas most begin with a
summary/abstract and contain clearly stated research questions and procedures
followed by well-presented findings and conclusions, the contribution by Pfaff
et al. does not include an abstract, and the one by Ehrhart does not answer
the research questions in an explicit, easy to follow manner. A few of the
contributions contain minor typos and word omissions, which is to be expected
in the first edition, but nevertheless needs to be mentioned in an evaluation.

Overall, however, the book is an important contribution to the study of
plurilingualism in educational settings with a focus on an individual
plurilingual speaker, and it is a volume that can be of use to policy makers,
teachers and researchers alike.

REFERENCES

Blackledge, A. and Angela C. (2010). Multilingualism: A critical perspective.
New York: Continuum.

Cummins, J. (1979). Linguistic interdependence and the educational development
of bilingual children. Review of Educational Research 49, 222-251.

European Commission (2003). Promoting Language Learning and Linguistic
Diversity: An Action Plan 2004-2006. Brussels: European Commission.

Göbel, K., Vieluf, S. and Hesse, H.G. (2010) Die Sprachentransferunterstützung
im Deutsch- und Englishunterricht bei Schülerinnen und Schülern
unterschiedlicher Sprachlernerfahrung. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 55 (Beiheft),
101-122.

Metsala, J.L., and Walley, A.C. (1998). Spoken vocabulary growth and the
segmental restructuring of lexical representations: Precursors to phonemic
awareness and early reading ability. In Word Recognition in Beginning
Literacy, J.L. Metsala and L.C. Ehri (Eds.), 89-120. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.

Sparks, R. and Ganschow, L. (1993). The impact of native language learning
problems on foreign language learning: Case study illustrations of the
Linguistic Coding Deficit Hypothesis. The Modern Language Journal 77, 58-74.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Anna Krulatz is an Associate Professor of English at the Department of Teacher
and Interpreter Education at Sør-Trøndelag University College where she works
with pre- and in-service English teachers. Her main interests include second
language teaching methodology with focus on interlanguage pragmatics,
content-based instruction, multilingualism, and teacher education.





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