How to Organise Successful Online Intercultural Exchanges

This month we will be publishing Making Connections by John Corbett, Hugo Dart and Bruno Ferreira de Lima. In this post John summarises what the book can offer its readers.

Since the very first days of the rise of digital communications technology, many language educators have enthusiastically grasped the opportunity to connect their own language learners with others elsewhere in the world. Online exchanges, or telecollaborations, have been taking place since the early 1990s on a variety of platforms: email, Facebook and virtual learning environments such as ‘Moodle’ and ‘Canvas’. The focus of the exchanges can simply be the development of language competence, or, in ‘online intercultural exchanges’, there can be a dual focus on developing language and intercultural communicative competence.

While there have been many publications on the pedagogy and outcomes of online intercultural exchanges – describing online tasks that learners might undertake, and the capacities required of learners and instructors – little has been written explicitly to give guidance and reassurance to educators who are embarking on online intercultural exchanges for the first time. Most veterans of telecollaboration will say two things about online exchanges: they are certainly worth doing, but they can be frustrating. Novices who start organising an online exchange with the idealistic view that wonderfully rich interactions will occur, simply by putting learners in touch with each other, are probably in for a rude awakening. And yet, given the right conditions, wonderfully rich interactions can occur.

With this in mind, Making Connections: A Practical Guide to Online Intercultural Exchanges was written to give advice to the novice educator, and reassurance to the veteran. The slim, readable volume is informed by the experience of the three authors as much as by the research literature on the topic. In the book, readers will find sensible ideas on a range of crucial topics:

• Finding reliable partners
• Choosing a suitable platform
• Identifying common goals, both linguistic and intercultural
• Addressing questions of ethics and personal security
• Breaking the ice online
• Designing online tasks
• Developing rapport among participants
• Assessing learners’ participation
• Evaluating the online collaboration as a whole

There is also some advice for those educators who might wish to use their experience of running an online intercultural exchange, or participating in such an exchange, as the basis of a thesis or dissertation for a postgraduate degree. The three authors have, between them, decades of experience of participation in intercultural telecollaborations, and one of them used that experience as the basis for his PhD. The book draws on their long history of working on telecollaborations by giving actual examples of when exchanges go well – and when they go badly. The guidance will help organisers and teachers of online exchanges to avoid some of the more obvious pitfalls, and give them support when they hit the inevitable obstacles. All in all, Making Connections encourages language educators to open up the world for their learners – and supports those who are already doing so!

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Second Language Use Online and its Integration in Formal Language Learning by Andrew D. Moffat.

How Can Teachers Deepen the Connection Between Language Classrooms and the Outside World?

This month we published Intercultural Citizenship in Language Education edited by Kaishan Kong and Allison J. Spenader. In this post Allison discusses the importance of Intercultural Citizenship in the language classroom and how the book can inspire both inservice and aspiring teachers.

It’s back-to-school season where I live in the Midwest region of the United States of America. Heading back to the classroom inevitably means taking a closer look at resources for teaching and learning. Our new edited volume, Intercultural Citizenship in Language Education: Teaching and Learning Through Social Action, explores ways to deepen meaning and connection between language classrooms and the world. By engaging in Intercultural Citizenship work, teachers can bring enhanced relevance to their language classrooms and promote learner engagement.

As a faculty member who prepares teachers for World Language and Multilingual Learner classrooms, I work with undergraduate students who will soon be doing the important work of language teaching. What is important about our work as language teachers? How will we motivate our students to delve into their language studies, and to stay engaged with language learning for more than just a year or two?  Our new book gives both theoretical and concrete suggestions for aspiring language teachers who are preparing for their future classrooms. I plan to share with my students some of the insights from the first chapter in our volume. This chapter explains how the important work of Social Justice education is intrinsically connected to developing Intercultural Citizenship. My students will benefit from the specific examples of classroom activities for developing a deeper understanding of one’s identity, engaging students in critical analysis of resources, fostering dialogue, developing agency to act and providing opportunities for reflection. I also plan to share with my students the research findings regarding the role of study abroad in teacher education. My pre-service teachers have all engaged in international study and are curious to explore how those experiences will impact their work as language teachers.

Current teachers are busy envisioning how this school year is going to play out. Through which new lenses can they spark students’ interests in the content they will teach? One chapter describes how Professional Learning Communities can be used to support teachers’ pursuits of Intercultural Citizenship education. Another explores how virtual tandem learning allowed Chinese and American students to build Intercultural Citizenship through structured cultural discussions. The benefits of Contemplative Pedagogies are explored in yet another chapter in the volume, providing concrete suggestions for framing intercultural questions and experiences with students. Finally, our book also explores the opportunities for Intercultural Citizenship that naturally present themselves in elementary and middle level dual language immersion contexts.

The framework of Intercultural Citizenship in Language Education provides teachers with inspiration for curricular innovation that helps students use their language skills to enact social change both within and beyond their local communities. We hope that both inservice and aspiring teachers will find our new book to be a valuable resource!

Allison Spenader

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Intercultural Learning in Language Education and Beyond edited by Troy McConachy, Irina Golubeva and Manuela Wagner.

Five Tips for Promoting Reflection on Language Learning

In September we will be publishing Promoting Reflection on Language Learning edited by Neil Curry, Phoebe Lyon and Jo Mynard. In this post the editors give their five top tips for promoting reflection on language learning.

Who are we?

This book’s editors and contributing authors are experienced language educators, and the context is a small, private university in Japan specialising in foreign languages. Some of us are learning advisors who have worked in the university’s large self-access learning centre (SALC), and others are language instructors who have taught at the English Language Institute (ELI).

What motivated us to write this book?

We have been collaborating for several years on a project promoting language learner autonomy inside and outside the classroom. As part of this project, we have been developing and trialling materials that encourage reflection on language learning and conducting research to evaluate the effectiveness of the process for our learners.

What is reflection on language learning?

On page 4, we define reflection on language learning as “the process of thinking deeply about one’s language learning to understand the processes to take informed and self-regulated action towards language outcomes.”

Why is reflection important?

Throughout the book, we argue that reflection is essential to language learning. Learners who engage in regular, systematic reflection are more aware of themselves and how they best learn. They are better equipped to take charge of the learning process and sustain motivation for learning.

What can educators do to promote reflection?

Each of the chapters disseminates research and practical applications to answer this question. In the conclusions, we summarise some of the key findings from the studies. Based on this, here are our five top tips for promoting reflection:

1. Written prompts facilitate reflection.

Prompts help learners think differently, organise their thoughts and express their ideas. After a while, learners can even write their own prompts or ask each other reflective questions. Still, initially, they need the structure of prompts and reflective questions. Provide reflective questions to help learners to look back, look inwards, look forward and take action, for example:

• How did that activity go? What went well? What didn’t go so well?
• What did you learn from the activity? How did you feel as you did it?
• What would you change next time?
• What action will you take from today?

2. Reflection can be done in written form, spoken form, and using visual or technological tools.

Experiment with different forms of reflection and ask students which ones they prefer. Have students keep records (e.g. logs, diaries, charts) of what they have learned to help them become more aware of their learning progress. Visual tools can help students express themselves deeply and creatively, even if they lack the language. Use technology tools creatively to help students keep track of their learning progress, write reflections, and interact with classmates and teachers/learning advisors.

3. Students need training on why reflection is important and how to reflect.

To get started, give students some metalanguage, examples and a structure for expressing themselves and discussing their thoughts, goals and learning progress. Allocate time in class for longer (e.g. 30-minute) reflective activities to emphasise the importance of reflection and to encourage peer sharing. However, do not ‘overdo’ it. We recommend that these activities come at the end of a unit or every few weeks.

4. Reflection is not ‘one-way’ but more effective if it is part of a dialogue.

Reflective dialogue helps students to organise their thoughts and think more deeply. If possible, talk to students one-to-one about their learning. Alternatively, respond to students’ written reflections to create a dialogue. Keep an open mind, and don’t judge or correct students’ reflections. Have students discuss their reflections with their classmates. Students value sharing their reflections with peers and giving and receiving encouragement and advice. Engaging in regular dialogues helps students stay motivated, connect with their teachers and classmates, and not feel so alone when learning a language.

5. Reflection should be an integrated part of ongoing learning (i.e. not a ‘one-off’ activity).

Regularly embed short reflection questions into classroom tasks or have students keep a short reflective journal outside of class time so that it becomes a natural part of language learning. Encourage students to try to do the reflection tasks in the target language so they can express themselves while learning a language. However, do not correct any mistakes and allow students to express themselves in their L1 if they prefer. Ask students to keep their previous reflections for later discussion and comparison. Looking back at previous reflections helps learners to see how far they have come on their metacognitive journeys.

Jo Mynard, Neil Curry and Phoebe Lyon

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Teacher Reflection edited by Zia Tajeddin and Atsuko Watanabe.

Connecting SLA Research and Instructed Second Language Acquisition

This month we published Psycholinguistic Approaches to Instructed Second Language Acquisition by Daniel R. Walter. In this post the author reveals the questions answered in the book and who it is for.

As second language acquisition (SLA) researchers and educators have likewise expressed, there is a significant gap between research in SLA and its application by teachers, educators, and curriculum developers. This gap not only exists in terms of the amount of communication and knowledge transmission between researchers and educators, but also how research should be used to inform pedagogical choices. This book is an attempt to remedy some of those issues by making direct connections between the lab and classroom, the researcher and educator, and broad spectrum of psycholinguistic research into language learning and the complex learning environment in which the language learner takes part.

Taking a psycholinguistic approach, this book explores the connections between SLA research and instructed second language acquisition (ISLA). Some of the questions I answer for colleagues at multiple levels of research an instruction include: What is the role of consciousness in second language (L2) learning? What are the underlying psycholinguistic mechanisms that support L2 learning? How can an understanding of these processes impact the way we teach languages, from early L2 learners through post-secondary students? And how can cutting-edge research in psycholinguistics and SLA inform the way we design learning over the course of a curriculum?

In writing this book, I hoped it might find a home not only with fellow SLA researchers, but also with educators at multiple levels; from those teaching in immersion programs in kindergartens and elementary schools, to those teaching at the post-secondary level. And also, that the knowledge contained and presented in this book would be useful for teachers from the first day of a new language class, all the way through the most advanced levels of instruction.

For teachers, it provides clear connections between psycholinguistic research and its implications for the language learning classroom, with straightforward methods and recommendations to support student language learning and development. It can function as an important tool for pedagogues, especially those entrusted with training future teachers and providing professional development to current teachers, who can see how the different activities, with which they already engage inside their classes, apply to the psycholinguistic development of their students.

And finally, I hope this book also impacts the field of (I)SLA in general. First, it could act as a catalyst for more teacher/scholars to make explicit connections between theory, findings, and practice in the space of second language learning. And secondly, and maybe more importantly, for researchers and educators to find places to connect, to bring about a deeper discussion at the personal and professional level, about how those who may lean more towards theory or towards praxis can come together to build a deeper understanding of our applied field of ISLA.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Complexity Perspectives on Researching Language Learner and Teacher Psychology edited by Richard J. Sampson and Richard S. Pinner.

What Motivates People to Learn Multiple Languages?

This month we published Motivation to Learn Multiple Languages in Japan by Chika Takahashi. In this post the author introduces the book and explains what inspired her to write it. 

I originally thought of writing this book when I was about to finish the last set of interviews with my two interviewees after nine years of data collection. I had started this motivation study in 2012, had published three papers on the earlier phases, and had unpublished data for the previous three years. What I felt was necessary at that stage was to put everything together to examine my interviewees’ long-term motivational developments to study multiple languages from a broad perspective. For that purpose, I felt that a book-length report was necessary.

We all know that it usually takes years to reach a certain level in any second/foreign language. We also know that it’s challenging to do so in more than one language, particularly when there is a strong social, political, or economic emphasis on one of the languages, in this case English. In a non-multilingual context like Japan, it may be even more challenging than in other contexts such as Europe. Yet I had these rich interview data to demonstrate that it is possible to be motivated to learn multiple languages even in a non-multilingual, exam-oriented context and to go beyond an instrumentalist view of language learning to see multiple language learning as a lifelong endeavor.

In the book, you will see that my interviewees experienced motivational ups and downs along the way, as they went from high school, to university, to graduate school, and into the working world. They had different approaches to language learning and went through distinct experiences even at the same schools, but they both showed compelling cases of persisting in learning multiple languages in their own ways. Readers may be particularly surprised that one of them ended up learning nine languages throughout the years. In an era when English functions as a global language and many learners question the necessity of learning another language when they can communicate in English, this is frankly quite amazing. I am sure that their motivational trajectories and perspectives on language offer valuable insights for our future language learning/teaching, no matter the context. I feel truly lucky to have met such wonderful learners, not only as a researcher but also as a language learner and simply as a human.

What I hope I have demonstrated through this book is that language learning is not just about gaining capital or a competitive edge in the job market. It is not something that happens only in formal education settings, either. My interviewees considered it a lifelong endeavor—an essentially human act that better connects us to other people—and showed that it can be so enjoyable and fulfilling if we have the right elements of motivation. I hope that readers both inside and outside Japan find these two cases illuminating and insightful for their learning/teaching of multiple languages in their given contexts.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Lessons from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency by Zoltán Dörnyei and Katarina Mentzelopoulos.

What is Authenticity in Language Teaching and Learning?

This month we are publishing Authenticity across Languages and Cultures edited by Leo Will, Wolfgang Stadler and Irma Eloff. In this post Wolfgang explains how the idea for the book came about.

The idea for the book came to my mind…no, this was much later. But it might have been there at the back of my head when I didn’t know (as a teacher of Russian as a foreign language = RFL) how to manage the balancing act between situations in the real world and situations in the classroom. I started teaching Russian in the eighties (last century!), no internet, no Russian native speakers on the Tyrolean ski slopes, communism, Cold War…Where to get authentic material? Soviet films? Colloquial audio material? No corpora, no social media…How to create authentic communication situations? Would learners/students have the chance to go to the Soviet Union? Where would they practice the target language?

Of course, at that time I was (not too) happy with the textbooks I had, and I used authentic material from my journeys to Russia (theatre tickets, metro jetons, coins, menus, photos of inscriptions on houses etc). Only when I started teaching at Innsbruck University, and very much later, did I think about the concepts of authenticity as presented in the literature. What did authenticity mean? Were there authenticities? Authentic teachers? Authentic materials? Authentic language? The Russian we read in newspapers and the Russian I heard in the kitchen of my Moscow friends were different. Russian in the hostel. In the streets. On stage. On TV. Confusing.

When the idea of the book was ripe as I wanted to get a grip on authenticity – WHAT IS AUTHENTICITY? – I thought that I would need editors, authors from other countries, other cultures. Was there something like intercultural/transcultural authenticity?

When I introduced the topic (also years ago) to my colleague at Humboldt University in Berlin, asking her whether to organise a joint seminar on authenticity and Russian language pedagogy, Leo came in. A colleague in Innsbruck told me that there was a guy in Munich who was doing his PhD on authenticity (albeit in English as a SL/FL). So, we invited Leo. And he came to Innsbruck for a talk in this joint seminar, telling us about the various forms of authenticity.

And when I was dean of the faculty, and involved in co-operations with South Africa and Canada, as well as with Israel, I thought of asking around who would be interested in joining my investigation into this mystifying concept. By then, I had learned that authenticity denoted more than certain text types (i.e. texts not purposely designed for language instructional purposes). Authenticity being deeply enmeshed with questions of self and identity, I wanted to explore how the dynamics of the concept play out in vastly different contexts of life and language learning.

My colleague Irma, from South Africa, had been invited to Innsbruck a number of times and we discussed the interplays of language and education on multiple occasions. South Africa has eleven official languages! This high level of language diversity provided interesting perspectives on language learning and the manifestations of authenticity which I had been pondering. When I mentioned the idea of a book on authenticity, she immediately responded with enthusiasm. When I introduced her and Leo to one another, there was a natural synergy between the three of us and the activation of our various networks commenced in order to issue invitations to potential chapter authors.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Complexity Perspectives on Researching Language Learner and Teacher Psychology edited by Richard J. Sampson and Richard S. Pinner.

How Do You Become Successful at Language Learning?

We recently published Lessons from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency and its companion volume Stories from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency by Zoltán Dörnyei and Katarina Mentzelopoulos. In this post Katarina introduces the books.

How do you become successful at language learning?

I will start with a disclaimer: the answer to this question highly depends on how you define success and what your own individual language learning goals are. But using one definition of success – nativelikeness – we asked 30 exceptionally successful language learners this same question. Without any heritage background or early immersion experiences, these individuals all learned an additional language to the extent that they could be mistaken for native speakers in that language.

So how does one become exceptionally successful at learning a language? It wouldn’t be an age-old question if it came with an easy answer. For decades, researchers have investigated the factors they think might affect ultimate attainment in language learning. They asked questions like: How far can language learning go? Does the amount of time you spend immersed in the language matter? What about your age when you start learning? Does the quality of language you are exposed to make a difference?

For us, rather than the environmental factors, what we wanted to know was the process behind the success. Why did these learners decide to learn the language? What was their experience like? What motivated them, and what sustained them when that motivation waned? Even more, what was it like when they reached the final stage of that journey? What is it like to be nativelike?

In 2020, we sat down with 30 gifted language learners and asked them to share with us their language learning (hi)stories from start to present. They proceeded to bring us on a journey through all manner of individual differences and learning factors:

• Their individual personalities and talents, from their openness and international posture to their musical ability and deep emotional connection with their languages
• The relationships they forged, the communities they took part in, and the role models that inspired them
• Their trials and tribulations related to multilingual identities, legitimacy and ownership, as well as their successes with carving their own paths through these circles and developing their own linguistic voice
• Their aspirations and goals, the strategies that saw them through, and how they managed to persist through any number of obstacles

These are just a few, and for every rule, there was always an exception.

So what’s the answer to our question? How do you become successful at language learning? We initially set out to write a single monograph to answer this, planning on analysing our learners’ narratives and drawing out specific lessons that could be learned. Yet it turned out that each of the stories was so distinctive with their own complexities that we felt their full narratives were just as important as the lessons we could distil.

Thus, readers can dive into each of our learners’ stories in the forthcoming volume, Stories from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency. Complementing this, the compiled lessons and research-related insights can be found in Lessons from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency: Motivation, Cognition and Identity. Both volumes can be read as standalones, but we highly recommend reading them together, as the overarching themes and the individual details complement each other in a way the lone books do not.

Ultimately, I regret to inform you that neither volume provides a single answer to our question, and there is a lot more to expand on in this burgeoning topic. Nevertheless, we hope that this duology contains a number of threads that provide learners, teachers and researchers alike a few drops of inspiration in your own respective journeys.

If you would like to get in touch to have a chat about the books or anything related, feel free to find me on Twitter (@KatarinaMentz).

For more information about Lessons from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency and Stories from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Autonomy Support Beyond the Language Learning Classroom edited by Jo Mynard and Scott J. Shelton-Strong.

Why Should Forced Migration be Considered in Research on Language Learning?

This month we published Language Learning and Forced Migration edited by Marte Monsen and Guri Bordal Steien. In this post the editors explain why it’s important to consider forced migration in language learning research.

When you listen to debates about migration in some European countries, you might get the impression that the rest of the world spend their life waiting for an opportunity to pack their bags and penetrate the European borders. As academics living in Norway, we are used to a discourse where adult language learners are portrayed as people who came to Norway voluntarily and need to meet strict Norwegian language requirements to prevent too many others taking the same journey. Researchers on second language acquisition also tend to view second language learning for adults as voluntary, and of course, many people both move across borders and learn new languages voluntarily for work, for studies or even just for the sake of new experiences.

However, many people experience that they are moved across borders with force. In Norway, the immigration policies are strict, so migrants coming to Norway from outside the EU will not be able to settle in Norway unless they are in special need of protection, such as UN resettlement refugees. Adult second language learners in Norway are thus usually forced migrants. In our work, we have met people who have been forced from their homes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, often by means of cruelty beyond our imagination. They have fled on foot to Uganda, where they have lived a rough life in a sort of limbo, as they know their life in Uganda is only temporary. Under these circumstances, many of them have learned new languages through communicating with people “in the streets”, and many of them have large language repertoires. After years in transit, sometimes decades, they have been resettled in Norway, where few or none of their current language resources are valued. Entering many countries in the Global North entails forced attendance of classes to learn the host language, as is also the case for Norway.

The language courses and language tests that the migrants will come up against in Norway and other European countries are based upon the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). A well-known critique of this framework is that it allows policymakers to easily use language proficiency levels as standards and gatekeepers, while the empirical foundation for these standards is weak, and while the descriptions of language proficiency in CEFR initially was developed to measure foreign language learning by students. Well used concepts within SLA that might further guide the language courses, like Selinker’s theories on interlanguage or various models of motivation or investment in language learning, are also based upon knowledge from students or voluntary migrants. This means that a large number of people that attend language classes in the Global North enter a system that lacks knowledge of their language backgrounds, their needs and their lived experience.

Because of the unique situation of refugees and other forced migrants, we believe we need a research agenda that takes into consideration the experiences of people who have been forced to cross borders. That is what we hope to initiate with our book Language Learning and Forced Migration.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Crossing Borders, Writing Texts, Being Evaluated edited by Anne Golden, Lars Anders Kulbrandstad and Lawrence Jun Zhang.

Language Learning in Primary School: Positive in Theory, Negative in Practice?

This month we published Early Language Learning in Context by David Hayes. In this post the author explains the inspiration behind the book. 

This book has its origins in my experience as a teacher, teacher-trainer and researcher in a variety of countries in Asia during my career and is also influenced by my own childhood educational experiences. Research tells us that access to high quality education, particularly basic education, offers one of the most important routes out of poverty for children born into poor and/or marginalized communities. That education ideally includes the opportunity to learn another language which has many potential benefits for children. For example, it can have a positive impact on children’s general educational achievement, it can help to develop intercultural competence through learning how the new language views the world as well as helping learners to reflect on their own language and culture from a different perspective and, when children leave school, it can even provide a competitive advantage in gaining employment in certain sectors of the economy.

The language that most children are offered in schools across the globe is English, which is closely linked to national economic needs in an era of globalization. However, the English as a foreign language education that many children receive (and the largest proportion of these will be the urban and rural poor) is often very far from high quality and demotivates rather than motivates them to learn. So there is a conundrum, one which I’ve had to face in much of my work: learning another language in primary school is good for children in theory but often a negative experience in practice.

I have been involved in several projects in different countries over the years designed to improve the learning of English in state education systems which, without exception, focus on ‘improving’ teachers’ pedagogical skills and ‘upgrading’ their English language competence. Though these projects have been well-designed and have had admirable objectives, the factors involved in successful language teaching usually extend beyond ‘improving’ English teachers to those which impact education more generally. It is difficult to provide high quality English language teaching without high quality education as a whole. Hence, this book discusses foreign – primarily English – language teaching in its wider socioeducational contexts to try to understand the place of languages in those contexts and the factors that either promote successful foreign language learning or hinder it.

The book also questions the wisdom of focusing so much on a powerful international language, English, when other languages may be available locally or regionally which would carry more meaning for children in school and then perhaps be easier for them to learn. If children develop a liking for languages closer to their experience early in their schooling, this might help the learning of an international language such as English later on. My main professional concern is with the education of the children of the poor and disadvantaged and a goal of the book is to encourage reflection on more equitable provision of language learning opportunities across educational systems, as a prelude to change in those systems. Without change at the system level, (English) language learning will just be one more obstacle to achievement for the world’s poor rather than an opportunity for their advancement.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Assessment for Learning in Primary Language Learning and Teaching by Maria Britton.

What Affects the Uptake of and Access to Foreign Languages?

This month we published Discourses, Identities and Investment in Foreign Language Learning by Jennifer Martyn. In this post the author explains what inspired her to write the book.

The story of this book goes back to my own history of language learning. Access to other languages at an early age outside of the classroom context stands out as being crucial in not only developing my own plurilingual repertoire, but also in piquing my interest in the way in which language learning is socially situated and a fundamentally political activity that can draw in some whilst excluding others. 

A range of contradictory discourses surround foreign language learning (foreign language learning usually describes classroom-based learning of a language that is not generally used by the speaker in their wider community). At secondary school, languages can be perceived as difficult and inessential, but also assets in the jobs market. Language learning is sometimes also perceived as something that girls and women are better at, an ideology that stubbornly endures.

Although each person has some degree of agency in terms of whether or not they choose to study a language or which language to study, we are all very much influenced, whether we are aware of it or not, by the discourses of language learning that circulate in our communities and across wider society. Languages are talked about and represented in a myriad of ways, all of which mediate our perception of them and our learning experiences. Whether or not one has access to a language, both in the literal and figurative senses, can also determine language learning experience. Some of us have access to other languages from an early age, while others do not. Nor are all languages valued equally in the marketplace and in wider society.

As a socially situated activity, language learning, then, is far from straightforward. Structural barriers, gendered language ideologies, and discourses of elite multilingualism, for instance, coalesce to make language learning seem difficult, unnecessary, uninspiring, or simply ‘not for us’. In the Irish context, there is limited research on sociolinguistic perspectives on foreign language education, particularly at the secondary school level. By employing an ethnographic perspective, this book investigates what young language learners think about language learning, while locating their experiences and beliefs within broader societal discourses and practices. It is hoped that this book contributes to a discussion of the social forces that mediate the learning experience in Ireland and elsewhere.  

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Portraits of Second Language Learners by Chie Muramatsu.