30.1518, Review: Applied Linguistics: van der Walt (2013)
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Subject: 30.1518, Review: Applied Linguistics: van der Walt (2013)
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Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2019 22:00:27
From: Mehdi Zouaoui [zalouteacher at gmail.com]
Subject: Multilingual Higher Education
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36460057
Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-1672.html
AUTHOR: Christa van der Walt
TITLE: Multilingual Higher Education
SUBTITLE: Beyond English Medium Orientations
SERIES TITLE: Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Mehdi Zouaoui, Istanbul University
SUMMARY
“Multilingual Higher Education” book, as the author has explicitly stated, is
designed mainly for university teachers who are teaching in a multilingual
environment. It also serves as a guideline that orients language teaching
practices in classrooms. The book is divided into five chapters that delve
into multilingual matters in a higher education environment.
The author starts her first chapter by pointing out fact that linguistic
diversity is perceived as a burden rather than an opportunity and also tackles
the idea that a ‘balanced bilingualism’ is the ability to use languages
equally well in all domains and modes. This phenomenon is prevalent and
considered to be the ultimate target for bi-/multilinguals. In this regard,
García (2009: 7) emphasises the fact that ‘bilingual education is not simply
about one language plus a second language equals two languages’, but that
students use a multiplicity of language practices, in different modes, calling
on their available languages as well as varieties of languages to manage their
learning and achieve their goals. This has urged many European universities to
give up the monolingual approach and try to grant some place to other
languages in their institutional design, even though monolingual based
education is still striving to shut out other literacies in order to encourage
the dominant Language of Learning and Teaching (LoLT). Another point that was
raised in this chapter is the sociocultural perspective of learning where the
author puts forward that language policies are reactionary in nature and they
are enacted only when an issue surfaces to the ground, or in other words,
they’re problem-driven policies. In addition to the aforementioned points, the
author highlights that the attempts to grant education access to a wide
audience have apparently diversified the nature of the segments that are meant
by “higher education (HE)”. With that in mind, the first four phases which
most countries go through are, according to the author, founded in fact on
deficit theories:
L2-related handicap: the child does not know enough of the majority language,
namely the minority parents.
Socially conditioned handicap: the parents are working class or in other
words, the whole minority group.
Culturally conditioned handicap: the child’s cultural background is
‘different’
L1-related handicap: the child does not know her/his own language and culture
properly, and this leaves him without a firm basis for L2-learning, and
jeopardizes their self-confidence.
The author then moves to the concept of horizontal mobility (transnational
students’ movement) that can be summarized in the following points:
First: HEI’s provide access to students from outside the country to pursue
(usually) a postgraduate programme.
Second: transnationally mobile students attempt to access comparable semesters
or modules within a particular qualification or a postgraduate qualification
that would be compatible with their graduate results at their home
institution.
Among the reasons for this transnational mobility are push factors such as
limited opportunities in the home country, and from an institutional
perspective, the desire to broaden the choice of programmes, and for the
students to learn languages. At the supranational level, the drive toward a
more internationalized atmosphere has ushered in curriculum change in terms of
substitution, assessment and quality assurance.
In the second chapter, the author gives a diachronic explanation of HE around
the world, and highlights the status quo of bi-multilingual HEIs. In the same
context, the author asserts that governments are striving to distribute the
economic burden of education by means of spreading this load over all possible
stakeholders including families and employers.
Within this equation, there is a pivotal role of English when it comes to
bilingualism and hence we can divide universities into these four categories:
Hypothetically purely monolingual in teaching and learning practice.
Using language proficiency entrance tests, having academic language support in
English.
Having language proficiency entry requirements, academic language support for
some students, learning material support in home/community languages, most
lecturers know English plus the home language of the majority of students.
Having bi-/multilingual language policies which govern teaching and learning.
In the same chapter, the author says that there are many factors that can
change multilingual higher education in one way or another. To name a few: the
history of the region (historical factor), the interpretation of language
status within a society and its link with upward mobility (socio-structural
factors), the extent to which languages are used in a given community (social
psychological factor), the cultural and ideological factors that influence the
nature and the purpose of higher education. Undoubtedly, bilingualism is yet
to gain its desired state of affairs and this is not likely to solve the
persistent problem of the mother-tongue stance toward educational equation.
In the third chapter, the author hypothesizes that learning is a social
practice and adds that the learning paradigm is mainly dominated by
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Actually, there are two prevalent
assumptions that shape the design of language courses adopting CLT:
● Language is taught mainly for interpersonal communication where the focus is
on oral communication and functional writing.
● Courses are designed for students who are moving from a L1 to L2 along with
its cultural components (monolingual bias).
One of the byproducts of CLT is English for Specific Purposes (ESP) where the
learner’s needs and the demands of a particular professional linguistic skill
are covered. Then, the author moves to the concept of situated learning which
is an integral part of generative social practice. Thus, language being an
important variable in the academic literacy discourse, language support can be
described in several different ways:
Scholarship that acts as a kind of apprenticeship under the supervision of a
subject matter expert (SME).
Scholarship as an orientation towards a community of practice: becoming a
professional
Scholarship to become a reflective practitioner.
Scholarship as ‘third space’: a position where lecturers and students keep a
balance between academic requirements and an emerging critical own voice.
This leads us to the conclusion that, the author claims, mastering the
language is likely to correlate with a successful completion of studies.
In the fourth chapter, the author says that there is a constant pressure on
international universities in terms of balancing between the official policy,
the local policy, and the enactment of these policies in routine assessments
and teaching (Robert, 2008:9). This balance underlies the effort to include
students from minority groups who may have studied the same LoLT but may also
find it challenging to manage studies at a higher education level. As an
example of that, the author mentions post-colonial Africa where English,
French, and other colonial languages enjoy high status at HE level, whereas a
community language is spoken outside the educational setting with a broad
diglossia. In this regard, Setati et al (2002) made a distinction between
exploratory talk where a home or community language is mainly used, and
discourse-specific-talk which, in their case, needs to be done mainly in
English. Students may feel that a particular language is not suitable for
academic purposes, either because they feel that their language ability did
not ‘develop’ enough for use at HE level or they may feel that using a
particular form of the LoLT may stigmatize them.
In terms of conceptualizing multilingual pedagogy in an HE classroom setting,
Baetens Beardsmore (2009: 157) concluded that “we know little about the purely
linguistic elements of rate and route of learning two or more languages,
depending on phasing and structuring of the curriculum, the effects of
transfer”. This calls for skill sets that bilingual educators as well
institutions should be equipped with. ‘Language arrangements’ refers to the
allocations of languages in various ways, sometimes supported by official
institutional, regional and national policies. Language arrangements may lead
to several outcomes such as strict separation of languages, which is likely to
cause the maintenance of both languages where language acquisition follows an
additive bilingual approach (one language is added to the learners’ existing
repertoire) rather than a subtractive approach whereby a home or community
language is gradually phased out and replaced by dominant LoLTs. Having said
that, the author offers many examples of language arrangements of HEI that
differ on the basis of time, space, and nature of educational programme. These
kinds of arrangements have the potential to create certain dynamics between
languages that are being used by both students and lecturers.
According to García (2009: 295) there are two types of approaches used for
language arrangements:
● A flexible convergent approach, where code switching is used randomly for
affective reasons in which a low-status language is deployed to facilitate the
development of literacy in a dominant LoLT. This is often referred as
monoliterate bilingualism and it belongs to the register of subtractive
bilingualism.
● A flexible multiplicity approach, where LoLT is used in language practices
that support meaning making in more than one language. The author proposes
five strategies and practices that can be implemented in multilingual
classrooms:
Instructional code switching: which will be successful in classrooms that are
not lecturer-dominated.
Co-languaging: which basically means the use of the same material translated
in two languages; in fact this falls under the umbrella of translanguaging.
Translanguaging: which underlies the offering of textbooks and articles in
more than one language.
Preview-view-review: where the content is introduced in one language
(preview), then explained in another (view), and finally reinforced in the
same language used in the preview phase.
Cross-linguistic work and awareness: where a part of the curriculum is kept to
be contrasted within the two languages, hence allowing students to
translanguage.
In the fifth chapter, the author mainly talks about the dichotomy of tool and
identity in language along with the dichotomy of language and content, namely
Content Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). CLIL is based on Marx’s assertion
that “ identity is therefore not to be viewed as a fixed or stable
characteristic of an individual, but rather as a process of continuous change
and permutation which is comprised of cultural identity, social role, and
discursive voice’ (Marx, 2002: 266). The author postulates that when we
foreground the role of languages as tools to mark the identity of speakers, we
can say that language functions as a tool at different levels of connectedness
to identities or aspects of identity. The other issue discussed in this
chapter is the relationship between language and content in which the author
stipulates that this is a result of an effort to support language development
in non-credit bearing courses. Thus, the new approach of CLIL was put forward
to promote this relationship; it can be thought of as an immersion approach.
In addition, the author states that she mainly tackled this topic from a
constructivist perspective, where instruction links up with the students’
linguistic abilities rather than expecting the student to meet a reified
curriculum. However, such a statement masks a variety of convictions.
including the fact that some languages are more suitable than others for HE,
that multiple languages cannot be managed in class, and that oral modes are
less suitable than written ones just to name a few.
EVALUATION
As the author confessed, she couldn’t do justice to the literature of other
languages given the fact that the book is about multilingualism, i.e.
different languages may water down the findings of the book to the extent that
they make it regional in nature and cannot be cloned to other multilingual
settings. The author also seems to disapprove of top-down institutional
policies, which should, in my opinion, have their own merits and could effect
much improvement if married with efforts of multilingual academics. While the
author claims that many European universities are moving away from monolingual
education, the dominant language is still English and other languages are
being offered merely for promotional purposes and not really to advocate
bilingualism since it is not common to find a European university that doesn't
have an English programme. Also, as an addendum to the concept provided by the
author about horizontal mobility, cultural mobility is an indicator the social
status of students where culture is a determining factor for students to take
equally but different positions in society or to scale up the societal ladder
and take more prestigious social status.
One interesting point the author touched upon is the concept of English-plus
multilingualism with the premise that English is almost taking over. This
concept is tied to the linguistic capital notion provided by Pierre Bourdieu
(1977) defined as the status where a speaker who enjoys a prestigious upper
class accent or dialect will have more credibility and legitimacy over the
others. The author also tackled the topic of education as an economic burden
that denotes the proportion of education expenditure in total household
expenditure and then moved to compliment the Communicative teaching approach
even though she was wary about the extent in which CLT is successful due to
its assessment practices where discrete-points are being tested. The
assumption that lies under CLT, based on the author’s view, may lead to an
acculturation of the learner with its two forms: integrative, where the
learner develops social contacts while keeping his own culture and style; and
assimilative, where the learner moves toward hosting this new culture
(Alireza, 2017). In this regard and, as the author already mentioned, an
educated native speaker has been primarily considered to represent the desired
communicative competence. One of the insightful opinions that the author
mentioned is the distinction between exploratory talk and
discourse-specific-talk. The former basically reflects the speaker trying out
ideas and arranging information into different patterns. Yet, Arocena (2017)
proposes a new type, namely presentational talk, which is basically focused
around adjusting the language, content, and manner according to the needs of
an audience. In the fourth chapter, the author mentions flexible multiplicity
approach, in contrast to flexible convergent approach, which may fall short
when it comes to quality assurance of bilingual literacy. When the author
discussed strategies that can be implemented in a multilingual classrooms, she
only mentioned code switching and seems to have bypassed code mixing which is
also a prevalent phenomenon that comes along with code switching with a twist
in it. In fact and in the African realities, many African countries are by
default code mixing communities. Also, code switching in the educational
setting can be divided into two categories: instructional code switching (that
the author mentioned), and regulative code switching which basically revolves
around classroom behavior such as discipline, announcing and even reducing
language anxiety for students Arocena (2017).
The author seems to have achieved a great deal of what she wanted to achieve
with this book through the multifaceted perspective she used to analyze the
topic, including economic, historical, political, educational, and linguistic
perspectives. For that reason, I think that the book would be useful for
researchers of central African multilingualism affairs thanks to the plethora
of examples and analyses she provided throughout the book and the ample
references and citations she has given. However, perhaps one of the drawbacks
of the book is the relatively poor coherence between chapters and in some
there is unnecessary digression. Certainly, the field of multilingualism keeps
growing with new theories and paradigms. However, the book offers, per se, an
account of previous literature and doesn’t really provide new findings but
rather reflects on what the literature has already found. One of the strong
points the book has is that it offers a full review of literature that can be
used to design new research projects.
REFERENCES
Akbar, Farah Sultana. ''The case against Monolingual Bias in
Multilingualism.'' (2013): 42-44.
Arocena Egaña, Miren Elisabet. ''Multilingual education: Teachers' beliefs and
language use in the classroom.'' (2017).
Baetens Beardsmore, H. (2009) Bilingual education: Factors and variables. In
O. García (ed.) Bilingual Education in the 21st Century (pp. 137–157). Oxford:
Blackwell.
Barnes, Douglas. ''Supporting exploratory talk for learning.'' Cycles of
meaning: Exploring the potential of talk in learning communities (1993):
17-34.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and symbolic power. Harvard University Press, 1991.
García, O. (2009) Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global
Perspective. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Lewis, Gwyn, Bryn Jones, and Colin Baker. ''Translanguaging: Developing its
conceptualization and contextualization.'' Educational Research and Evaluation
18.7 (2012): 655-670.
Marx, N. (2002) Never Quite a ‘Native Speaker’: Accent and Identity in the L2
and the L1. The Canadian Modem Language Review/La Revue canadienne des langues
vivantes, 59 (2), 264–281.
Roberts, C. (2008) Introduction. In H. Haberland, J. Mortensen, A. Fabricius,
B. Preisler, K. Risager and S. Kjaerbeck (eds) Higher Education in the Global
Village (pp. 7–16). Roskilde: Roskilde University.
Setati, Mamokgethi, et al. ''Incomplete journeys: Code-switching and other
language practices in mathematics, science and English language classrooms in
South Africa.'' Language and education 16.2 (2002): 128-149.
Shoebottom, P. ''The language learning theories of Professor J. Cummins.''
(2003).
Zaker, Alireza. ''The Acculturation Model of Second Language Acquisition:
Inspecting Weaknesses and Strengths.'' Indonesian EFL Journal 2.2 (2017):
80-87.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Mehdi ZOUAOUI is a lecturer at Istanbul University with an interest in general
linguistics, education, E-learning, and global affairs. He’s a frequent
article writer on E-learning affairs and he’s currently working on a project
entitled “MOOC Based Education for Refugees: Conceptual Framework”. He has
co-authored two books related to Turkish and Arabic language learning and
translated one.
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