Foreign language teaching has slowly started to steer away from the monolingual 'dogma' (Butzkamm, 2003), by welcoming the first language (L1) and students' additional language resources in the foreign language classroom (De Angelis, 2011; Haukås, 2016; Macaro, 2001; Molway, 2021). Furthermore, governing bodies in countries such as France (MEN, 2020), England (Ofsted, 2021) and Norway (NDET, 2020) encourage teachers to use students' multilingual repertoire. However, little is known about the connection between teachers' beliefs about multilingualism and how it actually translates into the multilingual classroom.
In this paper, we present findings from the international LANGUAGES project. Drawing on teacher surveys (n=48) and video-recorded lessons (n=128), the presentation will focus on teachers' perspective on multilingualism; English and French teachers' attitudes towards multilingualism and their teaching practices in foreign language classrooms. We present findings among teachers of English as a foreign language in France and Norway, and teachers of French as a foreign language in England and Norway, based on two datasets: (1) the Multiteach survey, where teachers express their attitudes towards and experiences with multilingualism (Calafato, 2020), and (2) video-recorded lessons where the same teachers teach foreign languages, to see whether and how they encourage the use of L1 or other languages than the target language in their lessons (Brevik & Rindal, 2020; Vold & Brkan, 2020).
Comparing teachers' perspectives on multilingualism and actual foreign language teaching, our analysis provides a unique perspective on two language subjects across three countries revealing traditions within each education system, as well as similarities and differences across contexts related to language policy, recommendations from national curricula, teachers' beliefs, and actual classroom teaching. The findings provide important insight concerning opportunities and challenges for language teachers, teacher educators and policy-makers across multilingual contexts.
References
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