Intergenerational Language Transmission and Social Identity (by Dr Ruth Kircher)

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Ruth Kircher is a researcher at the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, which is part of the Fryske Akademy in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.

When I visited Montreal for a conference fifteen years ago, it was not only love at first sight but also love at first sounds. The remarkable soundscape of the many different languages spoken in the streets of the city is very different from where I grew up: I was raised in a small town in Germany that was, and still is, almost entirely monolingual – including my parents’ household.

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Les approches plurilingues: plaidoyer aux futurs enseignants et enseignantes FLS pour trouver leur marge de manœuvre (by Dr Catherine Levasseur)

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.

Inspirée par les billets de Caroline Dault et de Kathleen Green à propos des choix que les sociolinguistes/enseignants font dans le cadre de leur enseignement des langues secondes au Québec, je me suis demandé comment je négociais les normes et les politiques linguistiques en classe de français langue seconde (FLS), traditionnellement ancrées dans l’idéologie monolingue. Je suis sociolinguiste, enseignante de langues secondes, en plus d’agir en tant que professeure et formatrice de futurs enseignantes et enseignants de langues. J’essaie dans ma pratique d’adopter des approches plurilingues, de les appliquer en salle de classe et surtout, de convaincre de leur utilité dans les cours de français au Québec et en contexte francophone minoritaire.

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Visiting playgrounds: blurring the boundary between private and public language practices (by Dr Catherine Levasseur)

For a year now, my main weekend outing has been visiting playgrounds – in my Montreal neighborhood, mostly, but also in Toronto, England and Wales. What I find most interesting in playgrounds, aside from the smile it puts on my daughter’s face, are the complex family language choices and practices at play.

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