plurilingual

A Plurilingual Personal Narrative (by Dr Maria Chiras)

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Maria Chiras, our guest blogger this week, is an English instructor at an English college in Montreal, Quebec. Her academic and professional contributions at the college include her involvement in curriculum coordination, committee work, and research projects. Her research interests include plurilingual, and translingual theories, discourse studies, writing studies and new literacies. Her research interests emerge from her own educational experiences as a plurilingual student in Montreal, Quebec. She has recently completed her doctoral research at McGill University, Faculty of Education, in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education. Her research focused on the role of plurilingualism in students’ experiences with language education and writing and the implications of these experiences for student persistence in Quebec higher education, in particular, the interaction between cultural identity, language, and writing. https://www.mcgill.ca/plurilinguallab/maria-chiras

As a first blog post for BILD, I would like to focus on my own personal narrative as a plurilingual growing up in Montreal and what led me to pursue my PhD research. I believe that our positionality plays a crucial role in how we approach both our research and our pedagogical practices.

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Joint Sojourners and Co-Learners on a Plurilingual Journey (by Dr Shakina Rajendram)

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This week’s blog post includes a linked audio file. Just click on the link below if you would like to hear the post read aloud. Scroll down to read the text.

Our guest blogger this week is Shakina Rajendram, a teacher educator and researcher at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Shakina’s research focuses on preparing teachers to support plurilingual learners in K-12 classrooms through multiliteracies, collaborative learning, and translanguaging.

“Good morning, students. My name is Shakina, and I’m here to learn Tamil from you.” 35 faces stared back at me, with looks of confusion and slight amusement in their eyes. A few students stole quick glances at the daily schedule plastered on a notice board at the back of the classroom. It was their English period now, and they were expecting to meet their new English teacher for the year. So, who was this person at the front of the classroom asking to learn Tamil from them, then? A few students muttered something to each other under their breaths. I continued, “I’m brand new to your school, and my Tamil isn’t very good. I heard that you’re all Tamil language experts, and I would love for you to be my teachers this year.” A few students chuckled quietly, but still, no one responded to me. I gathered up all the courage in me and said something in the little Tamil I knew, “நான் தமிழ் கொஞ்சம் கொஞ்சம் தெரியும்” (I know Tamil, a little little). Laughter erupted all across the room. “Teacher, எப்படி இல்லை!” (Teacher, that’s not how you say it!). I smiled. This was going to be the start of a beautiful plurilingual journey together.

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Cinq pistes pour enseigner le verbe en contexte plurilingue (by Dr Joël Thibeault)

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This week’s blog post includes a linked audio file. Just click on the link below if you would like to hear the post read aloud. Scroll down to read the text.

 Notre invité cette semaine est professeur à la Faculté d’éducation de l’Université d’Ottawa. Il s’intéresse, entre autres, à la prise en compte du répertoire linguistique des élèves, aussi pluriel soit-il, dans l’enseignement de la grammaire du français.  

Lors d’une présentation que j’ai récemment eu la chance de donner à l’université McGill dans le cadre de la série des conférences du Plurilingual Lab (Thibeault, 2020), j’ai exposé quelques données issues de ma recherche portant sur l’enseignement et l’apprentissage du verbe en contexte plurilingue minoritaire. Ces résultats, renvoyant à des travaux publiés dans les dernières années (Thibeault, Fleuret et Lefrançois, 2018; Thibeault et Lefrançois, 2018), m’ont dès lors permis, en fin de communication, de mettre en avant quelques pistes pour enseigner les verbes dans des contextes éducatifs qui se caractérisent par la diversité linguistique. Pour le présent billet de blogue, je me propose donc de reprendre ces pistes, afin d’outiller ceux qui sont appelés à enseigner le français à des élèves plurilingues.

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