This annotated bibliography is reformatted and customized by the Center for Positive Practices. Some of the authors featured on this page include Josep Soler, Antoinette Camilleri Grima, Susan Gal, Ute Smit, Virginia Unamuno, Julia Huttner, Jacqueline Urla, Luci Nussbaum, Victor Corona, and Linda Buttigieg.
(2013). The Emergence of New Linguistic Repertoires among Barcelona's Youth of Latin American Origin, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Since the end of the last century, more than 10% of students in Catalonia's schools are immigrants, mostly concentrated in areas of Catalonia where the population speaks Castilian in everyday life. Although these newcomers are educated in Catalan, the majority use diverse varieties of Spanish as their language of everyday communication. In the case of students from Latin America, it is possible to observe the emergence of a new repertoire that shares traits of different varieties of Spanish spoken in South America. This article focuses on the hybrid features of this repertoire, its transmission among peers, and also on the way teachers categorize and value it. The research results reveal that students develop multilingual abilities to fulfill practical goals. The data also show that varieties of vernacular Catalan and Spanish are articulated with a new Latino language repertoire in a complex set of resources in which linguistic forms of various origins are mixed. The uses of this hybrid repertoire can be related to key issues such as the speaker's stance regarding school, but also to symbolic aspects of broader processes, such as the re-territorialization of languages and people and the emergence of new processes of identity construction in a multilingual and cosmopolitan city. [More] Descriptors: Immigrants, Latin Americans, Foreign Countries, Multilingualism
(2013). Catalan in the Twenty-First Century, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. This special issue devoted to Catalonia–one of the most successful and longstanding language movements in Europe–gives a unique opportunity to understand some of the complex social dynamics engendered as language revival unfolds and to appreciate the value of in-depth interviewing, focus groups, and ethnographic work in making sometimes subtle change-in-progress visible. With 30 plus years of proactive language planning behind it, Catalonia is a living laboratory for exploring the social dynamics and ideological transformations set in motion by language normalization projects. For the nearby Basque language advocates with whom the author works, the strong institutional support language revival has enjoyed along with the extensive immersion schooling program (now under some attack), has been a source of envy not easily reproducible in their own context. Nevertheless there are many parallels between the dynamics described for Catalonia and the Basque Autonomous Community. In her commentary to the papers by Pujolar and Gonzalez, Soler, and Frekko in this issue, the author will note some of the parallels but focus more generally on the lessons these studies hold for scholarship on minority language revitalization projects in general. Lessons that have to do with the value of ethnographic work on language ideology; the importance of class as a factor in language revitalization; the challenges of cross national comparison; and the necessity for refining ways of categorizing speakers. [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Ideology, Language Planning, Language Maintenance
(2013). Italian in Malta: A Socio-Educational Perspective, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. In this contribution I present an overview of Italian in Malta, the third language of Malta, focusing on the role of this language within educational institutions and other domains of society. Italian was one of Malta's official languages till 1936 and, historically, it was used mainly within administrative and cultural spheres of society. Contact with Italian is evident in many Maltese words, which form part of the language as integrated borrowings. Although exposure to Italian television programmes is in decline when compared to the recent past, many Maltese still tune into Italian TV channels quite regularly. Italian is the most popular foreign language studied in local schools and there are regular political, commercial and cultural exchanges between Italy and Malta. [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Italian, Television, Programming (Broadcast)
(2013). Linguistic Reception of Latin American Students in Catalonia and Their Responses to Educational Language Policies, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. This study explores the connections between language policy implementation in three Barcelona-area secondary schools and the language attitudes and behaviors of Spanish-speaking Latin American newcomers. Data were collected through interviews and ethnographic participant observation document indexes of different forms of language socialization processes and highlight the role of teachers and of "Reception Classes" (RCs) in which students receive Catalan language support. Different RC models and placements of the RC in the school have effects on those processes and the students' attitudes toward Catalan and schooling. Deficient models result from lack of institutional support and unfavorable conditions of the RC in the school. Positive models result from individual teacher initiative and commitment to move beyond basic language teaching and include broader social and academic objectives for newcomers. We conclude that language policy meeting goals requires consistent commitment at all levels from policy-makers to individual teachers. [More] Descriptors: Student Attitudes, Latin Americans, Socialization, Language Planning
(2013). The Power of Beliefs: Lay Theories and Their Influence on the Implementation of CLIL Programmes, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is one of the most dynamic pedagogic trends in language teaching in Europe, and yet, the enthusiasm with which this innovation is implemented by stakeholders and "made a success" is not fully understood. In this paper we argue for an investigation of CLIL implementation as a form of extended language policy, which relates language management, practice and beliefs, and so expands the notion of policy well beyond a top-down legislation. In this contribution, the suggested centrality of beliefs to CLIL policy analysis will be shown by a detailed investigation into the lay theories of teachers and learners involved in CLIL instruction in Austrian upper secondary colleges of technology, which traditionally attract students considered as relatively unsuccessful foreign language learners. The data consist of 48 in-depth interviews with teachers and students in this setting, covering a range of teacher specialisations and of student abilities. The discursive and content analysis of these interviews shows clear clusters of beliefs relating to language learning, the effects and benefits of CLIL and to the construction of success regarding CLIL. Findings suggest that the strength of beliefs and the relative absence of language management result in a construction of CLIL and of CLIL success that is partly at odds with those of experts or policy-makers, but which is linked directly to local CLIL practices. Issues arising of these mismatches are discussed. [More] Descriptors: English (Second Language), Foreign Countries, Content Analysis, Language Planning
(2013). Genre-Based Curricula: Multilingual Academic Literacy in Content and Language Integrated Learning, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. This study addresses academic literacy in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) secondary education. More precisely, this paper focuses on attempts to meet modern standards for language competences set in areas like Europe, where the notion involves multilingual academic competence. The study centres on new proposals for language organisation in CLIL education based on genres resulting in a "multilingual genre map across the curriculum". The feasibility of this model was proven in the author's national context in an attempt to improve language competence levels. The study provides a revision of the language theory in CLIL classroom practice that sits ill with traditional structural formalism and is better served through multilingual genre-based, functional semiotic models. Textual examples and genres will come from the area of History. [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Multilingualism, Language of Instruction, English (Second Language)
(2013). Is the Personal Political? Chronotopes and Changing Stances toward Catalan Language and Identity, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. During the early catalanization of schooling in the Barcelona area in the 1980s, Castilian-speaking teenagers of working-class immigrant descent often struggled against Catalan language and identity. This longitudinal study followed a group of high-school classmates and found that as young adults, some but not all of the resistant working-class Castilian speakers have incorporated Catalan into their lives and identity. This article draws on Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the "chronotope" or time-space frame to analyze the accounts of language and identity given by informants who adapted positively to Catalan and that of a peer whose hostility to Catalan increased over the years. Drawing on three contrasting chronotopes, informants give different meanings to personal experiences and linguistic practices. Those who adapted positively to Catalan present their linguistic development within biographical and cosmopolitan chronotopes that emphasize individual maturation and experience. They reject the politicization of language and an ideology of authenticity that links language choice to origins. The more anti-Catalan peer presents a socio-historical chronotope that frames his own experience as political and related to national and state debates, and he draws on an ideology of ethnolinguistic solidarity and linguistic authenticity. [More] Descriptors: Language Attitudes, Foreign Countries, Romance Languages, Immigrants
(2013). Gozitan Dialects in the Classroom and Language Awareness for Learner Empowerment, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Linguistic evidence shows that the dialects of Maltese present on the islands of Malta and Gozo are distinct from Standard Maltese (SM) on all linguistic levels. This article describes the dialectal reality in Gozo and inside Gozitan classrooms on the basis of data collected through classroom observation and interviews. The emphasis on the use of SM varies from one teacher to another, and from one school to another. However, there seems to be a common understanding that Gozitan dialects are important as symbols of identity, but that they make it harder for the pupils to learn how to write in SM. This contribution puts forward a tested recommendation for language awareness activities in the relevant classroom situations. Through language awareness, learners who are dialect speakers become empowered to adopt the appropriate variety in context. Furthermore, from the affective perspective, having their dialect legitimised enhances their self-esteem as learners. [More] Descriptors: Metalinguistics, Foreign Countries, Standard Spoken Usage, Observation
(2013). Registers, Schools and Scales: Comments on Language and Identity in Twenty-First Century Catalonia, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Monolingual speakers of a national language continue to be the ideal figures on which national identities and senses of community are built. Yet this longstanding equation between nation and language is being contested by other ideologies. Alternatives are emerging from such disparate social locations as the European Union, now advocating for trilingualism as the mark of the "truly" European (Gal 2012), and urban schools and neighborhoods like those described in this issue. Significantly, Barcelona lies at the intersection of several scales of political organization, each with language policies that arise from and impact ideologies and practices. As an economically dynamic urban center with a flow of increasingly diverse immigration, it is located within an autonomous (and linguistically distinct) community, in a large state that has a linguistic project of its own, and is itself a member of the European Union, with its own language policies. The articles in this special issue show that friendship networks, neighborhoods and schools can be differently located within this matrix. Comparisons across such institutional contexts can be further aligned with comparisons over time (enabled by the high quality of earlier fieldwork), thereby illuminating how various factors contribute to change. But scale is not only a matter of political organization and policy but also of perspectives in interaction: How speakers locate themselves vis-a-vis their interlocutors, as they inhabit person-types that are imagined within envelopes of space-time (chronotopes). Of the many interrelated phenomena described in these articles, the author focuses on three: (1) the creation of new registers in schools; (2) the limitations of schools as sites for sociolinguistic research; and (3) a matter of perspective: how informants seem to have their eyes on varying scales of comparison and judgment when they evaluate the social significance of their own and others' linguistic practices. [More] Descriptors: Language Usage, Language Variation, Foreign Countries, Ideology
(2013). Languages and Language Varieties in Malta, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Maltese, the national language of Malta, is, without doubt, the dominant language of most Maltese in most domains of language use in Malta. It however shares official status with English, which is also in regular use. Most Maltese can, in fact, be said to be bilingual to differing degrees. This article begins by providing some background information and a brief outline of the geographical and historical origins of Maltese. This separate "entity"–one which also has its own dialects–has developed by melding elements from different sources. The internal heterogeneity of Maltese can be seen to be a reflection of the complex external situation of language use on the Islands. Official bilingualism in fact gives rise to a rich linguistic context of use within which Maltese speakers, bilingual and/or bidialectal to different degrees, operate. The notion of a continuum of use is employed as a means of explaining the complex linguistic behaviour of bilingual Maltese speakers. The effects of regular use of English alongside Maltese on the English of speakers of Maltese are also discussed briefly. [More] Descriptors: Second Languages, Foreign Countries, Language Variation, Bilingualism
(2013). Anxiety and EFL: Does Multilingualism Matter?, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. The current study is motivated by the gap in the current literature about foreign language classroom anxiety, namely the underlying construct of FL anxiety with regard to the understudied relationship between anxiety, proficiency, and multilingualism. The evidence for the effect of language anxiety on achievement is well-documented. More recently, there has been evidence that anxiety is inversely proportional to the number of languages studied; however, this notion of the relationship between multilingualism and anxiety is under-researched. This study analyzes the anxiety profiles of low-level multilingual (LLM) versus high-level multilingual (HLM) learners of English, using 123 EFL college students in Korea. The participants completed the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS); a factor analysis, and subsequently discriminant function analyses show the differences in language learning anxiety from a variety of perspectives. An intriguing new factor emerged from the data: fear of ambiguity in English, a factor which has previously not been discussed in the language anxiety research. Additionally, the English language anxiety profiles of the LLM versus the HLM participants were also distinct, answering the question of the effect of various levels of multilingualism on language learning anxiety. [More] Descriptors: Anxiety, Second Language Learning, English (Second Language), Language Proficiency
(2013). Moving from Informal to Formal Mathematical Language in Maltese Classrooms, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. In Malta, mathematics is often taught through code-switching between Maltese and English, mainly due to the use of textbooks published in the UK. The mixing of the languages has been a source of discussion for several years, with some educators accepting the mixed pattern, and others arguing in favour of using English alone. Furthermore, the possibility of using Maltese itself as the language for mathematics has also been mentioned, for both spoken and written modes. In this article, I discuss a potentially standardised Maltese mathematics register and reflect on the choice of the classroom language in terms of the implications of the choice on the use and development of "mathematical language". I illustrate various routes how one might move from informal to formal language, depending on which language/s is or are being used in the classroom. I hence invite educators to consider the language debate not only in terms of medium of instruction issues, but also in terms of the implications on the use and development of mathematical language. [More] Descriptors: Mathematics Instruction, Language of Instruction, Code Switching (Language), Foreign Countries
(2013). Legitimacy and Social Class in Catalan Language Education for Adults, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Adult students of Catalan are worthy of study because they reveal complexities underlying taken-for-granted assumptions about Catalan speakers and Castilian speakers. Far from fitting into neat bundles aligning language of origin, social class, and national orientation, the students in this study exemplify the breakdown of boundaries traditionally assumed to exist between Catalan speakers and Castilian speakers. These findings point to a disjuncture between public discourse and the lived experience of language users. Close examination of actual speakers' motivations, classroom performance, and national orientations reveals much more nuance; in this classroom, the fault lines run along social class divisions, which are themselves contrary to stereotypes. This finding advances studies of linguistic authority, suggesting that native speakers may be positioned differently in different sociolinguistic contexts, depending on their social class and whether the language in question is an institutionalized code or a minoritized one. [More] Descriptors: Adult Students, Native Speakers, Social Class, Romance Languages
(2013). The Anonymity of Catalan and the Authenticity of Estonian: Two Paths for the Development of Medium-Sized Languages, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Catalan and Estonian can be considered "medium-sized" languages with some key common features that allow us to analyze the evolution of the two cases comparatively. Firstly, other formerly hegemonic languages (Spanish and Russian, respectively) have historically minoritized them. Secondly, the political equilibrium has now changed in such a way that the "medium-sized" languages have been resituated in the public sphere, regaining some institutional recognition. In turn, this has caused the formerly dominating languages to be resituated too, where a high degree of contact between the two linguistic communities exists. Finally, in the globalization era, ideologies about (minoritized) languages may shift from identity-based values toward more pragmatic and instrumental ones. This article presents ethnographically collected data from both Tallinn and Barcelona (2008-2009), providing a reading of the Catalan case and evolution as seen through the Estonian experience. The study examines language-ideological constructs underlying the discourses of the linguistic groups in contact, how they affect and are affected by the context, how they interact with and co-modify each other and ultimately, how can they affect the process by which a "medium-sized" language may be adopted by "new speakers" and acquires a stable position at the level of its public functions. [More] Descriptors: Linguistics, Ideology, Language Minorities, Global Approach
(2013). CLIL in Sweden–Why Does It Not Work? A Metaperspective on CLIL across Contexts in Europe, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Many studies show positive correlations between content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and the learning of English as a foreign language. However, findings from CLIL research in Sweden do not match those obtained elsewhere. The aim of this article is to show that some explanations for discrepancies in results obtained across CLIL contexts in Europe may be found in nation-specific contextual factors. Four such factors are focused on: policy framework, teacher education, age of implementation, and extramural exposure to English. The article gives an overview of these factors in four European countries: Finland, Germany, Spain, and Sweden. A coordinate system is created using four quadrants: the policy framework factor is paired with amount of research; the age factor is combined with amount of CLIL; the teacher education factor includes pre-service and in-service programs; and extramural English is considered in amount and range. From this coordinate system, nation-specific CLIL profiles emerge. It is argued that such national profiles will serve as an essential theoretical point of departure for comparisons of research results across nations. Furthermore, the profiles will facilitate policy-level discussions on CLIL implementation in individual countries. [More] Descriptors: Profiles, Foreign Countries, Language of Instruction, Correlation