A strategic partnership for the study of Portuguese in multilingual settings

Category: Seminars (Page 1 of 3)

HL2C seminar: Míriam Buendía Castro (University of Granada, Spain), Design of a school science dictionary (English-Spanish) for bilingual primary schools in Spain

We are pleased to announce the next HL2C/SLLAT seminar, taking place on Wednesday 15th June 2022, from  12 noon to 1pm (Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London).

Presenters:

Míriam Buendía Castro (University of Granada, Spain)

Title:

Design of a school science dictionary (English-Spanish) for bilingual primary schools in Spain

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

In recent years, the interest in the English language has grown dramatically, driven largely by the European Union and its desire to consolidate a multilingual society. In Spain, this has resulted in the introduction of bilingual education programmes in many schools, and nowadays about two million children study in an English-Spanish bilingual school in Spain. Bilingual programmes in Spain use the CLIL approach (Content and Language Integrated Learning). The main problem faced by both parents and teachers of subjects taught in a foreign language, such as Science in English, is often the lack of knowledge of specialised English lexis and the limited resources to teach these specialised subjects in English. This project proposes the design of a school science dictionary (English-Spanish) for bilingual primary schools in Spain following both a bottom-up and top-down approach, i.e. the analysis  of corpus and dictionaries.

New Camões Lectureship at the University of Konstanz

From left to right: Dr. Fátima Silva (Camões Institute), Dr. Filipa Gonçalves (Konstanz), Professor Georg Kaiser (Konstanz), and Professor Cristina Flores (HL2C, Minho).

Thursday, May 5, 2022, marked World Portuguese Language Day and the creation of a new  Lectureship for the teaching of Portuguese at the University of Konstanz. The event included a lecture by Professor Cristina Flores, HL2C Vice Director, exploring the theme “Portugiesisch in der Diaspora: Erwerb und Erhalt einer Familiensprache” (Portuguese in the diaspora: Learning and Preservation of a spoken language in a family context). The new Portuguese Lectureship is co-funded by the Camões Institute and the University of Konstanz, and will be based at the Department of Linguistics (Fachbereich Linguistik/Sprachlehrinstitut).

 

HL2C Seminar: João Veríssimo (Lisbon), L2 morphological processing reveals the internal differentiation of the language system

We are pleased to announce the next HL2C/SLLAT seminar, taking place on Thursday 9th June 2022, from  3pm to 4pm (Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London).

Presenters:

João Veríssimo (University of Lisbon)

Title:

L2 morphological processing reveals the internal differentiation of the language system

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

Two broad perspectives have been advanced to account for observed differences between L1 and L2 speakers in attainment and processing. In one view, such differences are fundamental and possibly selective, with particular parts of the language system becoming hard or impossible for late learners to acquire in a native-like way – likely due to maturation. In another view, L1-L2 contrasts can be attributed to general factors, such as slower processing speed or amount of exposure, and are expected to be more gradient in nature, as well as more general in scope. In this talk, I will present results from experiments and meta-analyses examining the L2 processing of morphology, as a test case for these larger perspectives.

Our results indicate that differences between L1 and L2 speakers show remarkable selectivity and are restricted to specific parts of the morphological processing system (e.g., inflection, conjugation clases); in contrast, other sub-domains of morphology (e.g., word formation) can be processed in a native-like way, even when the L2 was acquired later in life. At the same time, the observed L1-L2 differences were often found to be gradient rather than all-or-none, for example, becoming more pronounced at later ages of acquisition. This suggests that a full account of L2 processing may require models that can accommodate gradient levels of nonnative-likeness and morphological constituency, while nevertheless respecting the internal differentiation of the language system.

HL2C Seminar: Yvonne Foley (Edinburgh), Diverse Critical Literacies: Pedagogies of Recognition

Our next exciting HL2C/SLLAT seminar will take place on Wednesday 1st June 2022, from 12 noon to 1pm (Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London).

Presenters:

Yvonne Foley (Edinburgh)

Title:

Diverse Critical Literacies: Pedagogies of Recognition

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

There are increasing numbers of pupils learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) in schools in the United Kingdom. In excess of a million pupils across UK schools currently speak one or more languages in addition to English, many of whom are refugees fleeing war and violence. There are very few papers that report on research that explores the diverse accounts of pupils learning EAL and their experiences in schooling contexts. Their voices remain silent. This study sought to begin to address those gaps by exploring how teachers draw on critical literacy practices to engage in identity work with their pupils.

This paper will present initial findings from a case study that set out to foreground a linguistically diverse group of EAL learners’ own voices about their identities and their school experiences as they develop literacies within an English-medium environment. A secondary focus of attention investigated how teaching staff within that context perceived the current situation and the needs of EAL learners, along with what they viewed as appropriate responses to these needs as learners constructed their sense of self.

A sociocultural lens was used to examine these perceptions and the interpretation of findings has drawn on recent theorizing on identity, belonging and migration. Interviews and classroom observations were used to address two main questions: how do EAL pupils talk about their sense of self during critical literacy practices? And what identities do teachers make space for during the teaching and learning of literacy in their school and classroom settings?

Initial findings and recommendations about ways in which both learner and teacher perceptions could be used to understand how multilingual identities are formed through the use of critical literacy practices will be discussed.

HL2C Seminar: Christopher Hall (York St John), Modelling plurilithic orientations to English with trainee teachers: A comparative international study

Our next exciting HL2C/SLLAT seminar will take place on Wednesday 4th May 2022, from 12 noon to 1pm (Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London).

Presenters:

Christopher Hall

Title:

Modelling plurilithic orientations to English with trainee teachers: A comparative international study

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

A major challenge in TESOL is how to address the learning needs of diverse global learners in a world where monolithic beliefs about English are still deeply entrenched. This study explored the extent to which such beliefs can be challenged in teacher education programmes using practitioner role models. In particular, we examined the role of ‘peerness’ in role models, i.e. whether or not they are demographically close to the student teachers they are expected to inspire. Accordingly, video clips featuring young, early-career English teachers from Germany and China modelling a ‘plurilithic’ orientation to the language were played to MA TESOL students in Germany, Austria, China, the UK, and Spain. The teachers from Germany and China were ‘near peers’ for the German L1 students and Mandarin L1 students respectively. The teachers from China also served as ‘more distant peers’ for students in the UK and Spain with other L1s. Survey and interview data indicated that viewing the role models was associated with increases in plurilithic orientation, and that the effect was greater for near peers than for more distant peers. We take these results as support for the use of near peer video modelling to promote ontological clarity about English in trainee teachers.

HL2C Seminar: Maria de Lurdes Gonçalves (Camões Institute), Teacher training in heritage language education: Challenges and opportunities

We are very pleased to announce our next HL2C seminar, taking place on Thursday 28th April 2022, from 3pm to 4pm (Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London).

Presenters:

Maria de Lurdes Gonçalves (Camões Institute)

Title:

Teacher training in heritage language education: Challenges and opportunities

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

Teaching Heritage Language (HL) is usually described as an endeavour situated within a continuum ranging from teaching L1 to teaching FL. Findings on the characteristics of heritage language speakers are helpful to guide teaching approaches, which intertwined with context knowledge, have been able to assist teachers to design successful teaching practices.

In this emerging field of research of Language Didactics, both teachers and researchers have been engaged in understanding and describing the specific work of HL teachers, in order to design adequate training and teacher education plans (Gonçalves & Melo-Pfeifer, 2020).

Based on the experience acquired over nine years of designing teacher education plans to assist HL teachers’ needs, this presentation will highlight some specific aspects of professional knowledge, having in mind and referring to challenges and opportunities of teacher training in heritage language education.

Gonçalves, M. L.; Melo Pfeifer, S. (Coord). (2020). Língua de Herança e Formação de Professores. Lisboa: Lidel.

HL2C Seminar: Joana Moscoso (Native Scientist) and Julia Schiefer (Tübingen), Exploring the effectiveness of an innovative science outreach programme for migrant students

We are excited to announce our next HL2C seminar, taking place on Thursday 31st March 2022, from 3pm to 4pm (Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London).

Presenters:

Joana Moscoso (Native Scientist) and Julia Schiefer (Tübingen)

Title:

Exploring the effectiveness of an innovative science outreach programme for migrant students

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

Inspiring ethnic minority and migrant students to pursue higher education or careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) challenges many European countries. This target group often underperforms in STEM subjects due to various reasons, including specific linguistic and educational needs. We will present the results of a randomized controlled trial testing the impact of an innovative science outreach program, which connects migrant students with scientists of the same linguistic and cultural background. The Native Scientist project (www.nativescientist.com) follows a science and language integrated learning approach bringing together real-world STEM professionals and migrant students to discuss science topics and science careers in the students’ heritage language. The interaction between scientists and students happens through workshops whose effectiveness has been studied for both the students and the scientists. We observed increased attainment value, intrinsic interest, self-concept, and intention to future participation in science, and increased intrinsic interest and self-concept of ability for the students’ heritage language immediately after the workshop. We also identified a range of challenges and benefits for participating scientists. Overall, results indicate a positive effect of the workshops and that it is possible to foster migrant students’ motivation for science through their participation in a science outreach program

HL2C YouTube Channel now online!

HL2C YouTube Channel now online

It is a pleasure to announce that the HL2C YouTube Channel is now up and running. We are using this channel to share video content of activities involving the Consortium and its constituent partner institutions.

You can access our channel by clicking this link.

We grateful to the speakers of our HL2C Seminar Series for their stimulating talks and for agreeing to share the recordings with the wider heritage language and second language community. Thank you also to Luiz Amaral, who suggested the creation of this channel, and to Sophie Bennett for editing the videos and co-managing the channel.

We hope you enjoy the YouTube Channel!

 

HL2C Seminar: Nur Ehsan Mohd Said (UKM), Differentiating instruction for EFL learners

We welcome you to our next HL2C seminar, taking place on Wednesday 9th March 2022, from 12pm to 1pm (Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London). The talk is co-organized with Lancaster’s SLLAT Research Group.

Presenter:

Nur Ehsan Mohd Said (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia)

Title:

Differentiating instruction for EFL learners: Identifying and measuring changes in language attitude and critical thinking (Joint talk with Lancaster’s SLLAT Group.)

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

As a country that was once under British rule, Malaysia has accorded English the status of a second language and its teaching is compulsory at both primary and secondary schools. However, local scholars have reported mixed attitudes towards the English language as evidenced by research from different decades. While some users display a favourable attitude towards the teaching and learning of the language, others have indicated a fear that English could be a threat to the national language. Despite being an important language in the country, efforts to mandate the teaching of English outside English classrooms by the government (e.g. the teaching of Mathematics and Science) have resulted in a public outcry and street protests in the past.

In this talk, I will share findings from a preliminary study that investigated the effects of differentiated instruction (DI) on English language learners’ attitude. Over the years, education practitioners have introduced DI to accommodate multifarious learning needs within intact classrooms more efficiently, but it is a relatively novel concept in Malaysia with limited empirical evidence from English classrooms. Spanning 14 months, the study employed a classroom research design to investigate an English teacher and his students’ experience at a national secondary school. Data were collected by means of a pre- and posttest, and semi-structured interviews. The classroom intervention comprised a 13-week module, designed in line with the national curriculum and learning activities were tailored to the students’ learning styles. Analysis of the quantitative data indicated that DI has had a positive effect on language attitude with a large effect size while also revealing findings that may influence the landscape of language teaching in the country. The qualitative data revealed a rise in learner autonomy and acceptance of the differentiated learning tasks. In line with the government’s aspiration, it is proposed that DI should be practiced by English teachers more readily. It may be further facilitated by greater collaboration between university researchers and schoolteachers, and centralized provision of training nationwide.

HL2C Seminar: Magdalena Grose-Hodge (Birmingham), Are the heritage and dominant languages of early bilinguals less complex and less fluent than that of monolinguals?

Our next HL2C seminar will take place on Wednesday, March 2, 2022, from 12pm to 1pm (Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London). The talk is co-organized with Lancaster’s SLLAT Research Group.

Presenter:

Magdalena Grose-Hodge (The University of Birmingham)

Title:

Are the heritage and dominant languages of early bilinguals less complex and less fluent than that of monolinguals? A comparison of linguistic abilities of pre-adolescent Polish Heritage Speakers and monolingual controls.

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

Background: With an estimated half of the world using more than one language in everyday life, bilingualism is a norm rather than an exception. However, researchers in the field of language acquisition and processing traditionally focused on monolinguals and viewed bilingual speakers simply as “two monolinguals in one person”. Research into differences between monolingual and bilingual performance and processing is not only relatively new but has also been producing conflicting findings, which fuels the existing social ambivalence relating to the acquisition of two languages in childhood. As a result, many parents and teachers question whether the effort needed to maintain both languages is worth the outcome or worry that speaking a minority language at home may hamper their offspring’s achievement in the dominant language as children “may get confused”. However, studying heritage speakers (here defined as early bilinguals of a minority language (Montrul, 2006:161) is important not only from the point of educational policymaking but it is also central to our understanding of the architecture of language as it can offer a window into bilingual minds. Therefore, the population, which was first studied mainly by applied linguists, is now becoming of interest to theoretical linguists investigating the role of input and maturational factors in language acquisition.

What makes heritage speakers an interesting group is that they acquire their HL as their first language, yet their linguistic competence is often different from that of monolingual native speakers, which has led to the formulation of the Incomplete Acquisition Hypothesis (Polinsky, 2006; Montrul, 2008). According to this, certain patterns, especially those that typically develop later on in life, are not fully acquired in HS’s minds. The term, however, received a great amount of criticism (see Otheguy, 2016; Kupisch and Rothman, 2018), and has now been abandoned in favour of “divergent acquisition” (Polinsky, 2018), which emphasises differences without suggesting deficiencies. It is this divergent competence that is of interest in this paper and 3 aspects of proficiency are discussed in the context of speech samples: fluency, syntactic complexity and lexical diversity. Additionally, receptive grammar is also tapped into as there is a documented imbalance between HS’ receptive and productive skills with the former usually being much stronger.

The study: focuses on 7-9-year-old preadolescents growing up in Polish families living in the UK, whose speech samples have been collected, transcribed and coded for lexical and syntactic complexity, and fluency, and subsequently analysed. The results have been compared to monolingual control groups through multiple regression modelling.

Results: Although bilinguals are slightly less fluent, they generally fall within the norms for monolingual speakers for most variables. The most interesting finding, though, is that their language appears to be more complex syntactically than that of monolinguals in both heritage and dominant languages. This provides further evidence that HS’ language is not incomplete but that the outcome is divergent from that of monolinguals. It could also shed light on the role of creativity and imitation in language acquisition and cultural transmission, and provide further evidence that children imitate selectively when they have a better understanding of the function of a given construction or linguistic element. When the function is not fully understood, they imitate more faithfully (Klinger, Mayor and Bannard, 2016).

References:

Klinger, J., Mayor, J. and Bannard, C. (2016) ‘Children’s Faithfulness in Imitating Language Use Varies Cross-Culturally, Contingent on Prior Experience’, Child Development, 87(3), pp. 820–833. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12503.

Kupisch, T. and Rothman, J. (2018) ‘Terminology matters! Why difference is not incompleteness and how early child bilinguals are heritage speakers’, International Journal of Bilingualism, 22(5), pp. 564–582. doi: 10.1177/1367006916654355.

Montrul, S. (2008) ‘Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism: Re-examining the Age Factor’, in. Montrul, S. A. (2006) ‘Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism as an instance of language change’, pp. 379–400. doi: 10.1075/LALD.42.22MON.

Otheguy, R. (2016) ‘The linguistic competence of secondgeneration bilinguals’, pp. 301–319. doi: 10.1075/RLLT.9.16OTH.

Polinsky, M. (2006) ‘Incomplete acquisition: American Russian’, Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 14, pp. 191–262.

Polinsky, M. (2018) Heritage Languages and Their Speakers. Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781107252349.

« Older posts