Speaker
Description
In Catalonia, embracing linguistic diversity and promoting Catalan language, a minoritised language, in education stand as a fundamental challenge. Despite its officiality, Catalan faces a low status and linguistic diversity and Spanish are seen as a threat for its maintenance. The Catalan government has implemented several actions to uphold its promotion, principally in schools, where Catalan is often kept separate from Spanish. Today, with the massive immigration waves and multilingual proficiency, multilingual perspectives are called to integrate multilingual students. However, there is a lack of empirical studies that document current language practices for integrating multilingual speakers and many schools continue using monolingual practices, especially in Catalonia.
This research examines the current pedagogical practices used to integrate multilingual and new speakers’ repertoire in a Catalan primary school, focusing on the schoolscape and use of translanguaging. The research adopts ethnographic methods, involving observations, interviews and recording. I use nexus analysis to analyse the language and teaching practices in relation to participants’ language ideologies and the school language policy. Findings reveal the wide use of Catalan monolingual practices and a strong connection between language ideologies and teaching practices. The monolingual practices uncover several barriers faced by multilingual speakers, including limited language learning opportunities.
| Presenting author | Laura Castañe Bassa |
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