Multilingual tasks as a springboard for transversal practice: teachers’ decisions and dilemmas in a Functional Multilingual Learning approach

Abstract

Functional Multilingual Learning (FML) aims to leverage pupils' full language repertoire in a strategic and transversal way across the curriculum in order to enhance access to conceptual understanding and improve skills in the language of schooling (Sierens and Van Avermaet 2014). This linguistic-ethnographic study explores the pedagogical decisions of four teachers in a French-speaking primary school in Brussels, Belgium as they create 'meaningful multilingual tasks' for their linguistically diverse classrooms. Findings indicate that tasks serving symbolic and linguistic functions were the easiest for teachers to conceptualise, and that class-level learning objectives often took precedence over individual objectives. Multilingual scaffolding only occurred in classrooms already functioning extensively within a socio-constructivist paradigm and needed to be supported by a free classroom language policy to be the most effective. Whole-class tasks generated a new sense of linguistic capital but entailed a reframing of the notion of inclusion as they sometimes generated feelings of linguistic insecurity or resulted in limited participation.

Building Vocabulary Bridges: Exploring Pre-Service Primary School Teachers’ Dispositions on L2 Vocabulary Instruction for Emergent Bilinguals through Interactive Book Reading

“…Functional multilingual learning can occur through spontaneous actions (e.g., translations by peers into their L1), class routines (e.g., translating assignments into L1 with translation tools), pedagogical organization (e.g., creating homogeneous groups based on students' L1) or through the planned and integrated use of L1 for specific tasks (e.g., a project where L1 use is encouraged). The development of L1 is therefore no pedagogical goal itself but a steppingstone or scaffold toward the acquisition of a new language [31].…”