Teaching and Learning Multiple Varieties of a Foreign Language for Sustainable Multilingual Education

Abstract

In multilingual education for sustainable personal development, compared with that of multiple languages, the teaching and learning of multiple varieties of a language has been underexplored as a special and important form of multilingualism. In this article, we examine the linguistic, psychological, and social characteristics of multiple variety learning, as compared with multiple language learning. Linguistically, acquisition of language varieties is a process of assimilating variants from a new variety into an earlier variety, which serves as a prototype system. Such assimilation is a psychological project of form-meaning interface development, which may follow the patterns of structural multiplication, conceptual involution, conceptual evolution, or/and conceptual transfer. When multiple language varieties are actually used in social contexts, multilingual individuals’ selected language practices may be supported by their combined linguistic resources from multiple varieties rather than depend on a single variety despite its dominance in a given situation. These characteristics carry pedagogical implications for sustainable multilingual education, particularly for the teaching and learning of foreign languages that have multiple varieties.

Modern Curriculum Vitae: Wordless Meaning Delivery by Using Symbols

“…Language variety is the variation of language according to the user who varies according to the topic being told, the storytelling relationship, the interlocutor, and the person being told and according to the medium of the conversation (Xu & Shan, 2021). Language variations or commonly called language variety can be caused by several things.…”

“…There are 4 varieties of language in terms of speakers (Xu & Shan, 2021), namely: a) idiolect (variety of individual language "color" sound, choice of words, language style, sentence structure), b) dialect (language variety of a group of speakers whose number is relative), c) kronolek ( variety of languages used by social groups at certain times), and d) sociolects (varieties of language relating to the status, class and social class of the speakers). Besides, there are also a number of varieties of language, such as variety in terms of usage, in terms of formality, and in terms of facilities.…”