The multilingual turn refers to developments in the ways that we think about and therefore teach children who are bilingual or multilingual. Classically these ‘English as an Additional Language’ (EAL) or ‘Culturally and Linguistically Diverse’ (CALD) students have been thought of as second language learners who speak with an interlanguage rather than a real language as they are learning and experience interference from their first language on the more important English. Instead of acknowledging the diverse knowledge and practises of these students they are perceived as deficient in linguistic abilities and even lacking in education.
The multilingual turn instead views the experiences and practices of bilinguals and multilinguals as resources and assets for their learning, it just makes sense that you would use the student’s language and the knowledge that they possess to help them learn.
This approach contrasts the more prevailing monolingual orientation in education which views monolingualism as the norm and leaves little room for engagement with languages and identities within the general classroom context. Research however has consistently shown that when we facilitate and integrate students’ languages and cultures in the learning process it allows them to access and utilise their specific ‘funds of knowledge’ leading to greater depth of understanding and more positive attitudes.
The mulitilingual approach begins by exploring and critically analysing teachers’ views and perceptions of mulilingual students and encourages a more equitable view of the student themselves, the student’s languages, and a much broader view of what learning entails.
Students’ languages in this approach are seen as resources for learning which means that firstly these languages’ status and power must be acknowledged, they are not less important than English. A whole world is built around a language and denying the importance of that language denies how important the communities who speak that language knowledge, history and culture is.
Students themselves are seen as capable social beings who use their languages in various ways, many of which are hidden from the teacher who only sees them in action within the school environment.
Language learning is viewed as multilingual social practice underpinned by critical perspectives.
It is difficult to separate our language/s from who we are because our language/s is/are how we express, and construct, who we are – language is where identities are negotiated.
Students’ languages and cultures and identities have clear and fundamental roles to play in the learning of language(s). Spaces which acknowledge and nurture multilingualism need to be imagined and created and the long-standing biases embedded in the systems must be critically analysed.
These significant shifts in thinking have led to the development of pedagogies that foster collaborative relations of power and that engage and affirm students’ linguistic and cultural resources and identity repertoires and results have shown that these practices can be transformational both at an individual and systems level.
