Multilingual Literacy

This book highlights multilingual literacy practices inside classrooms as well as the importance of multilingual literacy outside of educational contexts. It provides a springboard for developing opportunities for learning and identity-building for all, across different settings.

This book investigates multilingual literacy practices, explores the technology applied in different educational frameworks, the centrality of multilingual literacy in non-formal, informal and formal educational contexts, as well as its presence in everyday life. Thematically clustered in four parts, the chapters present an overview of theory related to multilingual literacy, address the methodological challenges of research in the area, describe and evaluate projects set up to foster multilingual literacy in a variety of educational contexts, analyze the literacy practices of multilinguals and their contribution to language and literacy acquisition. This volume aims to initiate a change in paradigms, shifting from structured and conservative problematizations to inclusive and diverse conceptualizations and practices. To that end, the book showcases explorations of different methodologies and needs in formal and non-formal educational systems; and it serves as a springboard for developing multivocal participatory spaces with opportunities for learning and identity-building for all multilinguals, across different settings, languages, ages and contexts.

Contributors

1. Esther Odilia Breuer and Elke Van Steendam: Multiple Approaches to Understanding and Working with Multilingual (Multi-)Literacy

Part 1: Issues, Methods and Insights into Multilingual Literacy

2. Tiane Donahue: Linguistic and Social Diversity, Literacy and Access to Higher Education
3. Monika Angela Budde and Franziska Prüsmann: Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German: A Proposal for Developing and Applying an Instrument for Selecting Suitable Research Participants
4. Annika Norlund Shaswar: “I Should Really Interpret Word by Word for You”: Researcher, Interpreter and Interviewee Negotiating Roles, Responsibilities, and Meanings in Two Multilingual Literacy Research Interviews

Part 2: Formal Education Framework: Multilingual Literacy in Classroom Practices

5. Ulrike Jessner, Emese Malzer-Papp, Elisabeth Allgäuer-Hackl: Paving a New Way to Literacy Development in Multilingual Children: A DMM Perspective
6. Malgorzata Machowska-Kosciak: “He Just Does Not Write Enough For It”- Literacy Practices Among Polish Adolescents in Ireland
7. Åsa Wedin: Construction of Identities in Diverse Classrooms: Writing Identity Texts in Grade Five

Part 3: Formal Education Framework: Technology-Driven Multilingual Literacy in School

8. Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer: Developing Multiliteracies in Online Multilingual Interactions: The Example of Chat-Room Conversations in Romance Languages
9. Claudine Kirsch: Promoting Multilingualism and Multiliteracies through Storytelling: A Case Study on the Use of the App iTEO in Preschools in Luxembourg

Part 4: Non-Formal Education: Multilingual Literacy at Home, in the Community and in Cyberspace

10. Deborah Bergman Deitcher, Helen Johnson, Dorit Aram: Multilingual Preschoolers’ Word Learning from Parent-Child Shared Reading of Informational and Narrative Books
11. Anat Stavans, Maya Tahar Eden and Lior Azar: Multilingual Literacy: The Use of Emojis in Written Communication
12. Anat Stavans and Eva Lindgren: Building the Multilingual Literacy Bridge

Index