The Effects of Open Education on Language Education

We recently published Open Education and Second Language Learning and Teaching edited by Carl S. Blyth and Joshua J. Thoms. In this post the editors explain what open education involves.

We first began talking about the possibility of a co-edited book on open education and second language (L2) learning and teaching at an open education conference in Park City, Utah in 2011. At the time, it felt as if we were part of only a small group of applied linguists in the US interested in the open education movement. We knew that colleagues from many other parts of the world, especially in the EU, were much more engaged in and had more fully embraced open education in their classrooms and with their research. We continued working on our own projects for several years after that time period, with Carl leading various open efforts in the US via the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL) at The University of Texas at Austin. As more colleagues in the US and in other parts of the world began to become aware of the disruptive affordances of open education, we re-visited the outline for the book that we had created and formally launched the project.

Open education can be defined via three main components: 1. open educational resources (OER), which are any kind of materials or tools that are created with the intention of freely sharing them with others without restrictive copyright or fees; 2. open educational practices (OEP), which include any kind of professional development activity that aims to inform others how to create, locate, and/or adapt OER or pedagogical activities that afford learners more agency in the learning process; and 3. open access scholarship, which involves sharing one’s research via open access journals and open digital repositories. Inherent in these three components are values such as accessibility, inclusivity, equity, and the democratization of knowledge. In essence, open education is about removing barriers to pedagogical resources, professional development practices/opportunities, and scholarship.

While the aforementioned barriers have always been present in our field and in other disciplines, the Covid-19 pandemic has shone a light on these concerning issues. Our book therefore is timely in that it explores how open education efforts in L2 learning and teaching can mitigate obstacles while creating new knowledge ecologies. The book is theoretically grounded in ecological perspectives on L2 learning and teaching and explores open education via a transdisciplinary approach. Contributors’ work is organized via three main areas:

• open efforts that affect learners’ developing knowledge in L2 instructional environments;
• open work affecting educators’ developing knowledge in L2 teacher education; and
• open initiatives related to developing knowledge in other areas in the field of L2 education.

Finally, it is important to note that this book is available via open access under a CC BY ND license. For more information about our book and to download a free copy, please see Multilingual Matters’ website.

Carl S. Blyth (University of Texas at Austin, USA) cblyth@austin.utexas.edu; website.

Joshua J. Thoms (Utah State University, USA) joshua.thoms@usu.edu; website.

How To Design, Run and Assess Quality Bilingual Programmes

We recently published Developing and Evaluating Quality Bilingual Practices in Higher Education edited by Fernando D. Rubio-Alcalá and Do Coyle. In this post the editors explain what to expect from the book.

We are pleased to reach the final stage of publication of the volume Developing and Evaluating Quality Bilingual Practices in Higher Education. It’s been more than two years of successful triangulation work with the authors and Multilingual Matters, which have led to the birth of a book that deals with topics surprisingly scantly covered in the literature of bilingual education. The publication of the book will undoubtedly unfold new perspectives on how quality bilingual programmes can be designed, run and assessed.

We have had the privilege of working with a host of experienced, recognized and well-known authors who have paved the way for producing a text with meaningful and grounded content. Emma Dafouz has prefaced the volume, and David Marsh, Wendy Díaz, Víctor Pavón, Patrick Studer, David Lasagabaster, Jennifer Valcke, Karin Bage, Pat Moore, Kyria Finardi, Inmaculada Fortanet, Maria Ellison, Felipe Guimaraes, Javier Ávila, Francisco Rubio and Rocío López have contributed to writing nine excellent chapters that have been strategically devised into two main parts. The first part is devoted to theoretical issues and discussion about language policy and internationalization, and the second to the application for setting up, supervising and evaluating bilingual programmes and classroom practice. We are very grateful to all of them and also to those that have endorsed the publication, namely Magnus Gustafsson, María Luisa Pérez Cañado and Esko Koponen.

The book is valid for all contexts in higher education. While the authors work mainly in Europe (UK, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Portugal, Switzerland) and America (Mexico and Brazil), the contents can be applied to any geographical area. Being keynote speakers, many of the authors participate in international academic events and therefore, the mindset permeating our volume promotes a globalized vision and represents institutions around the world.

It addresses policymakers (especially those chapters related to the analysis of language policies), programmes’ coordinators, researchers, practitioners and other stakeholders (especially those chapters referred to the exposition of tools and analysis of quality indicators).

It is our challenge to make a significant contribution to the field of bilingual education so that we inspire the use and adaptation of innovative tools to raise the quality of each and every one of the myriad of multilingual programmes. In fact, if there is no quality in those programmes after the considerable economic and human effort it entails, what is the purpose of having those programmes at all?

Fernando D. Rubio-Alcalá and Do Coyle

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Academic Biliteracies edited by David M. Palfreyman and Christa van der Walt.

A Lens into the Psychological Experiences of Learners and Teachers in Integrated Content and Language Settings

This month we published The Psychological Experience of Integrating Content and Language edited by Kyle Read Talbot, Marie-Theres Gruber and Rieko Nishida. In this post Kyle explains how the book came about.

The three of us (Kyle, Marie-Theres, and Rieko) are all interested in the psychological factors that impact language learning and teaching. As such, we are thrilled that our edited collection, The Psychological Experience of Integrating Content and Language, has found a home as a part of Multilingual Matters’ Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching series. We happen to think that this book offers a unique perspective into what we believe is an under-researched area; namely, how learners and teachers think and feel about teaching in integrated content and language (ICL) settings (e.g. FMI/EMI, CLIL, CBI, etc.). This collection of research papers covers a diverse range of settings and educational levels and topics such as the self and identity, cognition, learner and teacher beliefs, challenges and opportunities of learning and teaching in ICL programs, well-being, and self-efficacy, as well as professional development, classroom interventions and implementations.

The idea for this collection came together quickly. Kyle and Marie-Theres were working together as part of a nationally funded research project in Austria (ÖNB fund no. 17136) with several wonderful colleagues (thanks all!). The primary focus of this research project was on teacher well-being in CLIL settings across educational levels in Austria. Essentially, we were curious as to how CLIL contexts impacted the way teachers felt about their teaching in these settings, how this affected their lives on a more holistic level, and whether they were thriving in their roles or merely rolling with the punches. The primary investigator, Sarah Mercer, presented some of the preliminary findings of this research project as part of a symposium at the PLL3 conference in Tokyo. As it happened, Rieko was also featured in that symposium and was also researching CLIL settings. Before too long we were all brainstorming about a possible edited collection to house some of the work from our various research projects.

So why did we choose to center this collection of research papers on the psychological experiences of learners and teachers in ICL contexts specifically? Put simply, we view ICL programs as forms of educational innovations. Educational innovations have the potential to be destabilizing for learners and teachers (though they can also be enriching or everything in between). We are also aware that ICL settings are rapidly expanding globally and across levels of education. In speaking to the spread of EMI in higher education specifically, Macaro, Curle, Pun, An, and Dearden (2018) suggest that, “it is hard to see anything but further expansion of EMI in HE” (p. 68). In our view, the same can be said for other ICL program types across educational levels. With this in mind, we think some urgency is needed in addressing how these programs impact the experiences of the learners and teachers and we hope this collection is a small step in that direction. We think this collection of papers will be informative for teachers who find themselves teaching in various ICL settings, researchers interested in the integration of content and language or the psychology of language learning and teaching, and policymakers who may be faced with decisions of how to implement an ICL program in their context.

In sum, we are incredibly proud of this collection and excited that it has made its way into the world. We hope that this book finds its way onto many bookshelves and serves as a spark for future ideas and research in this domain and beyond.

Kyle Read Talbot

kylereadtalbot@gmail.com

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Investigating Content and Language Integrated Learning edited by Liss Kerstin Sylvén.

Native Speaker Privilege and Linguistic Racism in ELT

This month we published The Role of Context in Language Teachers’ Self Development and Motivation by Amy S. Thompson. In this post the author explains the inspiration behind the book.

This book is the culmination of years of experience as a researcher/scholar in SLA, before which I was a language teacher. As a researcher, I’m oftentimes hesitant to ask for participants; I feel as if I am encroaching on others’ personal space and time. For the data used to write this book, some of the language professionals represented are personal acquaintances, and some were part of an IREX fellowship program. An unforgettable moment when collecting data for this project was when a dyad of the IREX teachers thanked me for taking the time to listen to and record their stories. During the fellowship program, these teachers, some of whom had over 20 years of teaching experience, had been repeatedly instructed on how to teach more effectively – how to incorporate the American way of doing things. This particular teacher dyad told me “thank you for listening to our experiences, as we also have something to offer to the teaching profession.” In all of the conversations with the teachers, not one of them indicated a desire to be a native English speaker; in fact, their bi-/multilingual identities played a strong role in forming their ideal teacher selves.

I have taught languages both in my L1 (English) and in my L2s (Spanish and French); thus, I have been on both sides of the native/non-native spectrum. Nonetheless, as a white American L1 English speaker, I have enjoyed privileges that others have not. For these reasons, and others, this book is personal. The experience that I had with this data collection made me even more determined to accurately depict the teachers’ stories. I learned all that I could about their contexts when working on the individual chapters and sent the willing teachers, and others familiar with the contexts, drafts of the chapters for feedback. I purposefully did not censor comments from the teachers relating to the impact of American politics on learning English; as academics, our jobs are to push boundaries, which includes breaking down white fragility. English speakers, particularly white English speakers, need to be confronted with their privilege. Linguistic racism is still prevalent world-wide today, and in order to combat it, we need to first acknowledge its existence, as well as the effects it has on language curriculum and policies.

Early on in my university education, I saw the privilege for native speakers of English; I was hired (“hired” being not really the case, as the work was as a volunteer) as an “assistante anglaise” during my study abroad year in Paris where I taught English classes at a public elementary school and at the high school “Henri IV.”  I was 20 years old and had absolutely no training as a language educator; I was hired because of my L1 English-speaking status. After graduation, I was officially hired (with the whopping salary of 743 euros a month) as an “assistante anglaise” in the small Pyrenean town of Bagnere-de-Bigorre.  Again, I had absolutely no training in language pedagogy.

My situation isn’t unique.  Places all over the world are hiring L1 English speakers (or those who can physically pass for L1 English speakers), sometimes ignoring those who have spent years training and have passed rigorous content and pedagogy exams.  My friend’s brother who was hired to teach in Chile; my student who was hired in China so they could put her face on the recruiting brochures; my own situation being hired to teach English in France; the Turkish government’s campaign to bring in native speakers to teach English all over the country – situations such as this undermine and undervalue the years of education of bi-/multilingual English teachers all over the world.

Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely grateful for the opportunities overseas English teaching has afforded me; in fact, it was the start of my academic career in Applied Linguistics. Sitting in my small room in Bagneres-de-Bigorre, I remember thinking to myself that I had so much still to learn about language learning and teaching. Fast forward to today, I now have the experience of mentoring future language teachers and researchers. Like many Americans, talking about racism is difficult for me, but I push myself to read and have discussions about race and racism, including linguistic racism. Likewise, these issues are difficult to integrate into classroom discussions; however, these are not topics that we can continue to ignore, and we have the responsibility as language educators and researchers to ensure that our students, as future language researchers and educators, have the tools and resources needed to break down linguistic racism via curricular and/or policy change. What steps will you take today to help move us towards this goal?

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Theorizing and Analyzing Language Teacher Agency edited by Hayriye Kayi-Aydar, Xuesong (Andy) Gao, Elizabeth R. Miller, Manka Varghese and Gergana Vitanova.

Looking at Fieldwork Experiences Within a Masculinities Framework

This month we published Masculinities in the Field edited by Brooke A. Porter, Heike A. Schänzel and Joseph M. Cheer. In this post Brooke talks about the process of putting the book together.

In 2018, with the help of many invaluable contributors we created the co-edited volume, Femininities in the Field. For Heike and me, it was a much-needed contribution to the discipline as well as a cathartic space to voice previously overlooked, gendered experiences. For many it was a welcome piece and for some it became a necessary tool for fieldwork. Albeit far from comprehensive of feminine experiences, Femininities in the Field took a critical look at the role of gender in fieldwork and tourism studies. It wasn’t long after its initial publication that the idea of grounding the feminine in the masculine was considered. Philosophically, we tend to consider the ideas, concepts and things in terms of polarity or opposition. Thus, to accurately identify ideas as being described within a femininities framework we would also need to consider an opposing framework described by masculinities.

Adding Joseph to the team, we began to frame the masculine. Interestingly, and opposite to the first volume, cathartic would not be the first word of choice to describe the journey to publication of the masculinities book. Generally, we struggled with the content, the lack of regard to deadlines, and even the language choices of contributors, as they sometimes awkwardly attempted to express their own gendered journeys. Despite this struggle, we are immensely proud of the contributions. Having had time to reflect on the process, what we have come to realise was that some of the initial content that could have been read as offensive, was merely the contributors stumbling through a sometimes difficult process of self reflexivity – a process that is not commonly asked of males and one which they volunteered to take part in. In other words, our contributors, operating in a masculine field space, did not have to reflect on their actions or processes, but rather did so to advance our collective disciplines.

If the everyday is a microcosm of the world at large, then the rise of hyper-masculine cohorts like The Proud Boys emphasises the need to redouble efforts toward understanding contemporary masculinities. The aforementioned manifestations highlight how masculinities appear to have taken a turn, away from the rise of the metrosexual male in recent decades, and boomeranged to an era where the emplacement of men has shifted to make way for gender equality. This state of flux is fertile ground for casting an eye on masculinities that finds itself under sustained pressure to adapt to a rapidly developing status quo or oppose such shifts in vehement and outward ways as we have come to see around the globe.

Taking wider macro developments in masculinities into account and shifting the gaze to manifestations of it in research practice highlights that the undercurrents so redolent elsewhere inevitably find their way into the sights of research we encounter. What then are the implications for how we go about our research practice? Furthermore, notions of masculinities as singular and straightforward constructs are dashed in this edited volume where evidently, masculinities inhabit a spectrum of demonstrations and within this, speak volumes about how rather than gaze on ideas of masculinities that are taken for granted, more nuanced and open minded conceptions are pressing.

Brooke Porter, Heike A. Schänzel and Joseph M. Cheer

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Femininities in the Field edited by Brooke A. Porter and Heike A. Schänzel.

Figures of Interpretation

This month we published Figures of Interpretation edited by B.A.S.S. Meier-Lorente-Muth-Duchêne. In this post the editors explain how the book came about.

The idea behind this book originated from a research project the four of us conducted collectively. We worked together at the Institute of Multilingualism, University of Fribourg, on the research project “A Web of Care. Linguistic resources and the management of labor in the healthcare industry” funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. As part of this project, we collectively conducted fieldwork at a university hospital in Switzerland where we encountered many people who interpreted, ranging from medical doctors, cleaners, professional medical interpreters, technicians, secretaries, mothers, brothers, daughters and sons.

This experience was our inspiration for Figures of Interpretation. We learned how people who interpret came in many guises and were first-hand witnesses to structural oppression, exploitation and disenfranchisement, as well as resilience and hope. We realized that they were figures whose lives revealed larger historical and structural processes through the singularity of their individual trajectories. We wanted to know more about them. We felt that what we experienced was not unique to the particular site and situation we were exploring. We were convinced that such figures have existed for a long time, in various places, with diverse valuation process. We started to think of papers we had read from colleagues who – without framing their analysis in terms of figures of interpretation – provided glimpses of the trajectories of such figures. We recalled conversations with friends and scholars who could have been those figures themselves or who encountered them in their own fieldwork. We imagined situations and moments when people we knew could have met figures of interpretation without necessarily looking at them as such. Progressively, the book took shape in terms of content, and we believed that bringing those experiences together in a volume could allow us to engage in a wider debate about what interpreting does and what it means.

But we also thought a lot about how to grasp these figures, how to talk and write about their lived experiences. The issue of writing about these figures coincided with our own trajectories in academia. We were a bit fed up with the canon we were socialized into, and slightly disillusioned by the limitations we imposed on ourselves and that were imposed to us by academia. We wanted to explore something else without necessarily knowing where it would lead us, nor if this was the right way to do. But we were excited to try it out. The idea of vignettes, of written portraits emerged and we gave it a first go with a couple of figures we encountered in our fieldwork. We realized that writing these short texts was not only challenging, but also forced us to look at the trajectories and the practices of the interpreters in a different way, giving space for a certain type of narration that fully endorses the interpretative dimension of figures of interpretation. Then we envisioned what the book could become if the people we had in mind would participate in such an adventure. We were fortunate enough that most of the colleagues and friends we contacted were enthusiastic about this idea, accepting with joy, excitement, fears and doubts. Many wrote the texts outside of their paid hours, or away from what might be immediately measurable in their professional lives. Many felt happy to have fewer constraints. All were open to doing something different(ly): either by stepping out of the constraints of academic writing, or by engaging with an academic audience for the very first time.

And here we are. Neither the contents nor the format of this book corresponds to academic standards. Instead of showcasing methodological innovations or discussing theoretical paradigms, this collection of 31 portraits invites readers to be conscious of their own interpretations, aware of the editor’s decisions of order and their necessary arbitrariness and attentive to the illustrations that themselves follow their own line of interpretation. This book is also an interpellation on the fundamentally collective dimension of knowledge production. Each portrait constitutes a piece of a complex puzzle. We need Sandra, Quintus, Conrad, Bintou, Ilona, Aïcha and all the other figures to grasp what interpreting is and what it does. And we need Kathleen, Aneta, Carlos, Arnaldo, Biao, and all the other authors of this book to guide us towards a better understanding of the manifold challenges interpretation as a social practice entails. This collection welcomes the readers to participate, see differences and make their own connections.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Decolonising Multilingualism by Alison Phipps.

How do Editors and Potential Contributors to a Volume Find Each Other?

We recently held an online event with series editors and authors from our Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching series about publishing their books, with an opportunity for audience questions at the end. Here’s a taster of one of the questions that was discussed, answered by Ali H. Al-Hoorie and Peter D. MacIntyre.

How do you go about finding contributors for an edited volume? What about new researchers who want to publish a chapter in an edited collection? How can they find out about relevant collections? 

Ali H. Al-Hoorie and Peter D. MacIntyre

This question has two parts, the first part is from the editors’ perspective. Finding contributors often is a matter of reading the literature and getting to know the people working in an area, including those who shape the history of a field and the recent work as well. Sometimes, as an editor, you hit on an idea whose time has come, and contributors are excited to be part of a collection that recognizes the emergence of a new research area or integrates work on a topic that seems to require it.  When an editor has a good idea for a book, new and established scholars alike will want to be part of it. When inviting contributors, especially people who have established themselves in a field, it is important to give enough time to allow them to write a contribution. An editor might also entice contributions with an innovative or flexible format.

From a contributor’s perspective, one way you find out about publishing opportunities is to watch for calls for papers. These might come via an association or mailing list. Perhaps the most popular mailing list is LinguistList. If you follow authors in your field, they might put out a call on social media. Not all books provide an open call for papers, as some are by-invitation only. But there might still be collaboration opportunities with faculty members. A new researcher can join up with an experienced researcher or mentor as a co-author, if they know you are interested.

You can watch the recording of the event and find out the answers to the rest of the audience questions here:

Digital Spaces for Teaching Multilingual Writing

We recently published Creating Digital Literacy Spaces for Multilingual Writers by Joel Bloch. In this post the author explains what we can expect from the book.

As the internet has developed from a place to exchange photos of cute cats to one for new forms of literacy and new ways of sharing them, the design of digital spaces for teaching multilingual writing has increased in importance. My book discusses not just technology but literacy as well, based on my years of teaching writing. I address many of the controversies in literacy, the use of technology, writing pedagogies, and teacher training.

The book first discusses the connections between technology and literacy pedagogies and then provides a chapter on blogging, reflecting on the impact of technology and its evolution for teaching writing. The chapter on MOOCs and flipped learning addresses not only technological issues but also pedagogical concerns that teachers address whether they use technology or not, on the design of the classroom and the roles of teachers and students. The chapter on multimodality and digital storytelling addresses some of the issues existing throughout the field of multilingual writing, particularly in academic writing classrooms. Digital stories can be incorporated into these courses, individually or collaboratively created, depending upon the pedagogical goals of the teachers.

This book is teacher-centric, placing teachers at the center of the questions of design as well as providing a way to respond to controversies in teaching writing, such as translingualism, since they support using language varieties, stories, and the rhetorical forms and artifacts that students bring to the classroom. In my experiences as a teacher, reviewer, and editor, I have seen the disruptive roles of technology on all levels of teaching. Publishing incorporates almost every opportunity and controversy in the field of teaching writing: where to publish and in what language, as well as issues related to choices of English, writer identity, and knowledge creation in the publishing space. The internet has supported expanding places to publish and the connections between writers and readers as well as the issues regarding open access and associated copyright and intellectual property issues. Such openness also has created problems regarding the so-called “predatory” journals and forcing writers to decide on appropriate places to publish.

Most of the book was written before the COVID-19 pandemic; however, it addresses many of the issues the pandemic raised. The chapters on MOOCs and flipped learning discuss both positive and negative concerns with technology and online education. Publishing has been greatly impacted by the need to publish related to the pandemic. Personally, it has greatly expanded my access to professional development. I have participated or listened in on meetings held where I could never physically attend.

Teachers incur the same issues with technology that society faces: privacy, access, inclusivity. One of the messages of the book is that the process will inevitably be messy. When we switched to online teaching, I tried adapting flipped learning to my publishing class, but my end of semester evaluations indicated I had left out some of the social factors that I had written about. The end of the pandemic will not mean that digital literacies will fade. Here in the United States we don’t know what the “new normal” will mean.

William Gibson, the science fiction writer, once said that the future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed. Students and teachers both face disruption from traditional and newer technologies and the growing anxieties that all disruptions bring. Another book on digital literacy may look very different; it may not even be a book. However, this book still discusses the concerns and anxieties teachers and students may face with new technologies that have disrupted teaching and learning to write.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Second Language Writing Instruction in Global Contexts edited by Lisya Seloni and Sarah Henderson Lee.

At the Crossroads of English-medium Instruction and Translanguaging

We recently published English-Medium Instruction and Translanguaging edited by BethAnne Paulsrud, Zhongfeng Tian and Jeanette Toth. In this post the editors explain how the book came about.

As language educators involved with teacher training, the three of us share an interest in how language use is addressed at all levels of education, but especially in nominally monolingual contexts like English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes. While languages have traditionally been kept separate in teaching and learning, the more fluid view of languages and language use found in translanguaging has gained traction among researchers as well as teachers (e.g., García, 2009; Paulsrud, Rosén, Straszer, & Wedin, 2017; Tian, Aghai, Sayer, & Schissel, 2020). Research in these publications has shown us that the scope of translanguaging is more than a pedagogy that involves alternating languages of input and output in bilingual classrooms. Beyond pedagogical practices, translanguaging offers a transformative ideological shift that both challenges linguistic hierarchies and promotes social justice, offering implications for what may be considered legitimate languages for learning.

When Zhongfeng was working with his PhD research on translanguaging in bilingual education in the US, he realized there was very little published research on translanguaging in EMI programmes. A quick search online led him to BethAnne, who was conducting research on EMI and translanguaging on the other side of the world in Sweden. After months of exchanging ideas for an edited volume to address a gap in the field, they invited Jeanette, with her expertise on EMI in Swedish primary schools, to join them. Our editorial team was in place and the book project was launched!

Our aim with the volume was to bring together a wide range of studies from different contexts and educational levels, and the response was overwhelming. The many interesting contributions revealed the quality of research on EMI and translanguaging taking place across the world. We are especially excited that several underrepresented contexts are included in our volume, with empirical studies from African contexts including Kenya, Malawi, and South Africa; several Asian contexts including Cambodia, Hong Kong, Japan, Kazakhstan, Maldives, and Turkey; and the European higher education context in Italy. In their chapters, the authors have included some of the best examples of translanguaging to be found, illustrating how teachers and students make use of their diverse linguistic repertoires to make meaning and facilitate content learning at the crossroads of English-medium instruction and translanguaging. In addition, the volume offers contributions that question the English-only ideologies often prevalent in EMI programmes, and instead consider how translanguaging may disrupt English hegemony. We know this volume will be of interest to researchers and teachers alike.

Finally, we must say that we are grateful to have been able to work with such an outstanding group of international scholars – although most we have never even met in person. However, our common passion for understanding the complexities of EMI and translanguaging has made them valued collaborators. As for us three editors, BethAnne and Jeanette still hope Zhongfeng (now a PhD) will make it to Sweden one day so we can actually meet in person as well!

Jeanette Toth, Zhongfeng Tian and BethAnne Paulsrud

For more information about this book, please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like New Perspectives on Translanguaging and Education edited by BethAnne Paulsrud, Jenny Rosén, Boglárka Straszer and Åsa Wedin.

How Does Literacy Work in a Multilingual Context?

We recently published Multilingual Literacy edited by Esther Odilia Breuer, Eva Lindgren, Anat Stavans and Elke Van Steendam. In this post the editors explain the inspiration behind the book.

When we met at one of the first meetings of the COST project on Strengthening Europeans’ capabilities by establishing the European literacy network, we soon realised the importance of research on multilingual literacy – even more so when we had to communicate with each other in our common foreign language English especially in writing, via different media. We experienced first-hand that writing in the foreign language presented us with some challenges. There are so many aspects which one needs to keep in mind! The search for words and for the correct spelling can interfere with your wanting to express yourself, which in turn can have a negative (and sometimes) demotivating effect on communicating with each other. However, at the same time these challenges to establish common ground presented opportunities to learn from the process and from each other. This interesting dynamic in itself was the stimulus and incentive to collect papers that shed light on multilingual literacy from different perspectives.

However, it is not only for us four that foreign language reading and writing has become ever more important: In the 21st century, we are living in a world in which multilinguality has become the standard rather than the exception. Many people have grown up with more than one language, or they have moved to countries in which their first language is not the common language. We are expected to speak fluent English, although it is a foreign language to us, not only in academic but also in many other contexts – and we also often do so in written form, either as the recipients or as the producers thereof.

Reading and writing in foreign languages has thus become the norm – but this does not make the processes easier. It is because of this that it has become crucial for people from many different contexts to explore how literacy works in a multilingual context, and to look for answers to the following questions:

• What do we already know about multilingual literacy?
• How do linguistic and social diversity interact?
• How does multilinguality shape identity?
• What is the impact of new literacy technologies on multilingual communication?
• How can we support multilingual literacy?
• And more generally: What can we learn from each other?

The chapters in the book address these and many other questions and we enjoyed reading them. We are sure you will too!

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Assessing Academic Literacy in a Multilingual Society edited by Albert Weideman, John Read and Theo du Plessis.