Home / Heritage / Community Languages

Home / Heritage / Community Languages

Home / Heritage / Community Languages

Home / Heritage / Community Languages

Home / Heritage / Community Languages

Home / Heritage / Community Languages

Home / Heritage / Community Languages

Home / Heritage / Community Languages

Welcome!

This page has a special focus on languages used or taught at home, or within community or faith settings.

It has been created by an informal Home / Heritage / Community Languages Advisory Group hosted by the British Council and ALL (who also share the Chairing and Secretariat).

Thanks to all the volunteers who have already worked together to collect content, and organize this Zone!

We are very grateful to the colleagues who have shared with us photographs from different countries and contexts to embellish the page, including Lisa Stevens and Jim Anderson.

If you would like to get in touch to find out more, recommend or submit any content then please contact [email protected]

HHCL Advisory Group: Vision and Goals

Home, Heritage and Community Languages Advisory Group: Vision and Goals

This document, produced by the HHCL Advisory Group who support this webpage, includes our Vision for Home, Heritage and Community Languages (HHCL), details of the the HHCL Advisory Group and our purpose, goals and current progress towards them.

There are also FAQs about issues affecting Home, Heritage and Community Languages, other references and links.

Please click here to read the full document.

The HHCL Group has created an Information Page on Community-led Heritage language settings, which include supplementary / complementary and so-called Saturday schools. It can be downloaded here.

This document, which seeks to address the lack of awareness of work taking place in community-based heritage language settings, was created in response to the Global Call to Action for Heritage Language Education (See Good News Stories below).

An editable version of this text is available for personalisation. Please request it by email to [email protected] FAO Steven Fawkes.

HHCL Newsletters

The newsletter aims to provide key information on developments in the field, including CPD and other events, and thereby to encourage dialogue and collaboration. It is planned to send out the HHCL Newsletter twice a year, in September/October and February.

We are in the process of building up a mailing list of colleagues involved in supporting HHCLs in mainstream and community contexts. If you are not currently on the mailing list, but wish to be added please inform [email protected] marked f.a.o. Steven Fawkes.

Equally please inform Steven through the same address if you have received this issue of the Newsletter but do not wish to receive further issues.

Recent events

We list here references/links to recent events on related themes including some from other organisations. We cannot guarantee that these links remain live.

The Reading University Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CELM) brings together a multidisciplinary group of researchers broadly interested in language, literacy and multilingualism.

They organise events within the local community in Reading, and online, with practitioners and other stakeholders. Please click here for full details.

They also have publications, and you can visit their outreach YouTube channel.

HHCL Zoom October 2024: Hybrid Teaching and Learning

Please click here to access the HHCL Zoom October 2024: Hybrid Teaching and Learning

Podcast of a recent interview with Jo Lo Bianco (7.5.2024)

Please click here to access the Podcast of a recent interview with Jo Lo Bianco (7.5.2024)

Your language counts

The Erasmus+ project 'Your Language Counts’ launched on 22nd March 2024

A recording of the launch events is available here.

This begins with a keynote talk by Dr Gisi Cannizarro (Heritage Language Education Network and Forum for Heritage Language Coalitions in Europe, FOHCL Europe) called

'Countless Ways to Support Heritage Language Educators’.

Gisi’s talk is followed by an introduction to new EU project ‘Your Language Counts’ with participants from Finland, Germany, Greece, Netherlands and Sweden.

Your language counts

The Erasmus+ project 'Your Language Counts’ launched on 22nd March 2024

A recording of the launch events is available here.

This begins with a keynote talk by Dr Gisi Cannizarro (Heritage Language Education Network and Forum for Heritage Language Coalitions in Europe, FOHCL Europe) called

'Countless Ways to Support Heritage Language Educators’.

Gisi’s talk is followed by an introduction to new EU project ‘Your Language Counts’ with participants from Finland, Germany, Greece, Netherlands and Sweden.

HHCL Zoom November 2023: Engaging with Families

We had four great presentations at the November webinar from Fatima Khaled, Shahla White, Silvia Fermo and Antonella Sorace. All different but all complementary, and all both passionate and positive about the rationale for children maintaining heritage languages.

Please click here to view the webinar.

HHCL Zoom March 2023: Raising the profile

A vibrant webinar with contributions from:

Jignasha Patel, BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir
Clarinda Calma, Embassy of the Republic of Poland
Declan Baharini, International Newcastle
Anna Grainger, Coventry City of Languages

Plus a host of ideas and news shared by delegates.

A session recording is available here.

Declan Baharini's Presentation
Jignasha Patel's Presentation
Please click here for the Session Chat.

Celebrating and supporting multilingualism

Celebrating and supporting multilingualism

A recording of this event (available until 28th April 2023) from the North-East Festival of Languages is here.

Forum of Heritage Language Coalitions in Europe

Forum of Heritage Language Coalitions in Europe was held in November 2022 online

Theme; Multilingual Children and Multilingual Libraries: Cultivating Reading Habits in the Heritage Language'.

Please click here for full details.

Home, Heritage and Community Languages – Zoom Event March 2022

Many thanks to all who signed up, attended and/or contributed to this first event.

The agenda allowed for networking time in breakout rooms, with discussion focussing on issues and ways forward for HHCL, as well as updates from the Exam Boards about GCSE 2022. . Here you can read the notes made in the Chat along with some updates on a range of issues.

Please click here for more information.

HHCL Zoom May 2024 : HHCL, community and active citizenship

In this webinar we heard from Amina Meshnuni about the work of Shpresa in the Albanian community
and from Fatima Khaled about a funded project in the local community of Brent.

HHCL Community and active citizenship Fatima Khaled

Shpresa presentation

Shpresa at Westminster March 2022

March 2022

An event at the Houses of Parliament was organised by Shpresa

‘The journey of leadership at Shpresa Programme: 20 years of women doing leadership’.

The meeting was introduced by Stephen Timms (MP for East Ham) who has been a strong supporter of Shpresa. The series of talks demonstrated how, alongside language teaching,  supplementary schools do so much to support young people’s wellbeing and personal development and to help them play a positive role in society, and the Shpresa Programme is here.

You may also like to take a look at the Albanian snapshot and Shpresa partnership toolkit in this Zone.

Home, Heritage and Community Languages – Zoom Event May 2022

Many thanks to all who signed up, attended and/or contributed to our second event on Safeguarding issues. Thanks to the speakers from DfE, from Cambridge Bilingual Groups and Rustam School.

The Department for Education published the following guidance - Keeping children safe in out-of-school settings: code of practice - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk), to support out-of-school setting providers to understand what they need to do to run a safe setting. They also published accompanying guidance for parents - Guidance for parents and carers on safeguarding children in out-of-school settings (www.gov.uk), setting out positive signs and red flags to look out for, in order to help them make more informed choices when selecting out-of-school settings for their children.

Out-of-school settings are unregulated under education and childcare law and generally provide tuition, training, instruction or activities outside normal school hours (for example, evenings, weekends, school holidays). Examples range from sports clubs to Scouts, as well as religious organisations and tuition centres.

Please click here to access the session recording. To view the session Q&A, please click here.

You can find the presentations from the evening by clicking here.

Home, Heritage and Community Languages – Zoom Event, Nov 2022: Motivation

Many thanks to all who signed up, attended and/or contributed to our fourth event on Motivation. Special thanks to our speakers: Fatima Khaled. Catia Verguete and Elham Mousavi.

Please click here to access the session recording.

Please click here for the Chat and Notes.

Home, Heritage and Community Languages – Zoom Event, June 2022: Differentiation

Many thanks to all who signed up, attended and/or contributed to our third event on Differentiation. Special thanks to our speakers: Saussan Khalil, Luma Hameed and Joanna Mazzocchi (by film).

Please click here to access the session recording.

Joanna's film from Glasgow Polish School is here.

To view the session Chat and Notes, please click here.

A presentation linked to the theme is here.

How learning Asian languages changes your worldview

WEBINAR: How learning Asian languages changes your worldview | Melbourne Asia Review.

Panellists discuss gaining new levels of personal inter-connectedness and cultural understanding through language learning.

Please click here for full details.

Bilingual Parenthood

Please click here to view a blog based on an inspiring encounter at a Congress in Perugia.

International perspectives

Open Language

The Sydney Institute for Community Languages Education (SICLE) has established this portal to bring together available resources to support teaching both in out-of-hours community languages schools and primary and secondary schools. For many languages there is a gap in quality heritage/ second language teaching materials.

http://openlanguage.org.au

International Conference on Community/Heritage Language Education (Nov 2021)

http://icchle.org/

5 talks by experts in the field:

Keynote 1: Beyond Complementary, More than Integration: Towards a Vision of Community Language Maintenance as the Transformation of Communication(4MB .pdf)

Keynote 2: Stories, Communities, Voices: Revitalising Language Learning through Digital Storytelling (12MB .pptx)

Keynote 4: Community/Heritage Language Education in the United States: The state of institutionalization and bottom-up innovation (9MB .pdf)

Keynote 5: Professionalizing Community-based Arabic Language Education: Prospects and Challenges (926KB .pptx)

Keynote 5: Reimagining language, community and identity in community language learning (390KB .pdf)

Future events

Bilingualism Matters Symposium 2025

The Bilingualism Matters Symposium (BMS) is an interdisciplinary conference organised by Bilingualism Matters. It is open to researchers as well as practitioners, irrespective of their affiliation with Bilingualism Matters. The BMS aims to stimulate a productive dialogue between researchers in different academic disciplines and practitioners in different sectors of society. BMS will take place in Edinburgh from March 24-25, 2025.

BMS25 is a hybrid conference. The main focus will be on in-person presentations but online participation and discussion will be possible.

Please click here for full details.

Language Learning Buzz

Bilingualism Matters have a Language Learning Buzz online event aimed at teachers working in complementary schools on 29 April 2024 at 17h00:

Please click here for full details.

Global Classroom Pair-Share

Global Seal of Biliteracy invites language educators to join its THIRD COHORT of the Global Classroom Pair-Share

Global Classroom Pair-Share is a new, innovative way to connect classrooms around the globe with a shared focus on learning language and discovering new places and cultures. If you’re interested in growing your students’ language skills while growing global connections, you are the perfect candidate to participate. Global Classroom Pair-Share provides teachers with FREE professional development, opportunities to collaborate with other language teachers from around the world and participate in multiple real-time and asynchronous classroom interactions.

Teachers can match with another global classroom for 3 months with an expectation of one shared collaborative project per month. At the end of the three months, teacher participants can receive three free student tests to qualify for a Global Seal of Biliteracy. Signing up for the program includes free professional development on second language acquisition and lesson design.

This programme is open to language classrooms in mainstream and heritage schools and starts in February 2024. Here is the link.

Understanding Multilingual Children’s Language Development

Discover the benefits of multilingualism to enhance your practice in classroom, clinical, and home settings with this online course from the University of Reading.

Please click here for full details.

Next HHCL Webinar

HHCL webinars are usually held each term online in the early evening, and are open to all interested parties. Details are advertised in the ALLNet email newsletter to ALL Members, via X (Twitter) and in the ALL Events listing Click here for information.

Futurelearn

'Plurilingual Classrooms in Action'
University of Glasgow
Full details here.

EAL Events Online and in person at QKA Peterborough

Queen Katharine Academy Peterborough holds regular events in person and online relating to EAL practice.

#CelebrateSpeaking 2024

#CelebrateSpeaking 2024 launches in Spring

The British Council and ALL collaborative project is back for a fourth year to 'Celebrate Speaking'. You can see the British Council website for more information, and it would be great if you could encourage others to be involved and record a short video with the hashtag #celebratespeaking and the language eg: #Arabic #German #Urdu to share across social media channels in support of the collaboration.

To encourage participants of all ages to show off their speaking in a language they are learning, or use in their community, they are invited to prepare either:

  • A short poem in the target language (written by themselves or by another author)
  • A short presentation
  • A short sketch
  • A short dialogue

This can be a solo or joint performance but should be no longer than 90 seconds in total.

Any and all languages are welcome!

Branching out with languages

Branching out with languages – workshop series for mainstream and complementary school teachers

Bilingualism Matters and SCILT, Scotland’s National Centre for Languages, are offering a series of free, online professional learning workshops for teachers in complementary and heritage language schools based in Scotland, UK and beyond in 2024. To find out more and register, please go to Bilingualism Matters Events page.

The Bigger Picture: the basics of bilingual language development and the role of teachers, parents and communities
Wednesday, 31 January 2024, 17:00

The Language Learning Buzz: strategies to engage and motivate learners, both online and in the classroom
Thursday, 22 February 2024, 17:00

The Supportive Classroom: strategies to support learning and encourage positive mindsets within a group of mixed ability learners
Wednesday, 20 March 2024, 17:00

Please click here for full details.

Bell Foundation

Bell Foundation training for EAL, and the multicultural, multilingual classroom is listed here.

Good News Stories

Here we point to other areas of the ALL website with stories about, or of interest to, professionals working in specific language fields.

Of course there are the Language Zones for Arabic, Chinese languages, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese in this area : https://www.all-languages.org.uk/research-practice/language-zones/

Some of these have restricted access – for ALL members.

Here are some others:

news
QKA World Language Day

Queen Katharine Academy Peterborough World Language Day 2024 

To celebrate European Day of Languages on 26th September QKA held their first World Language Day event to acknowledge the wealth of world languages spoken within the school. Sixty different flags from across the world were displayed to highlight the languages spoken across the academy and the countries of origin of our students.  

All students in years 7 – 11 were off their main timetables on this day and undertook different workshops to explore the value of languages and how we use them.  

Students worked in their form groups to discover more about the languages spoken by their fellow students and had an opportunity to learn about the job opportunities that language learning can lead to.  They were able to undertake a language lesson in Korean, Urdu, Italian, French, or Yoruba as well as having great fun trying out Bhangra dancing, Flamenco, street dance or a drama workshop.  

Lunchtime was an opportunity for students to show how they use their language in song by busking on the main thoroughfare.  

The whole school embraced the activities, and the canteen complemented the activities by providing a plethora of international food for the day.  (Students involved in the planning of the day had been able to submit suggestions for the culinary fair.) 

All in all, the event was a huge celebration of the school community’s cultural diversity and students were thrilled to see their flags displayed and to talk about their language and communities.

Around the World Club at the Museum

Read here about the impact of using the ENACT web app with diverse communities, migrant and local families.

Please click here to view.

10 reasons from India

10 Reasons Why Learning a Second Language at an Early Age Benefites Students | Times of India

Click here 

Peace Cranes

North-East Festival of Languages: 12,000 children send paper birds with messages of peace to the world in many languages as part of the Peace Cranes project. Read the story and watch a short film here.

Celebrate Speaking 2024!

#CelebrateSpeaking 2024 included this contribution from Italian A-level students at The London Academy of Excellence talking about the importance of studying Italian!
Use the # to find lots of other offerings in lots of languages!

Please click here for more details.

Here is one in Malayalam.

Global Call to Action for Heritage Language Education 2024

Global Call to Action for Heritage Language Education 2024

UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day 2024 (IMLD 24) on 21st February celebrates students’ universal right to study their heritage languages.

In time for IMLD 24 a new global think tank of academics and practitioners have created an easy-to-use list of recommendations for everyone – from students to mainstream schools to policy-makers – to help improve heritage language and culture education for multilingual children worldwide.

The Global Call to Action for Heritage Language Education will be launched on 21st February here.

If you want to help heritage language educators and the children they support, please pledge commitment to the Global Call to Action publicly on social media -- on or after February 21 -- and share widely within your networks!

Cambridge first leadership forum

Congratulations to colleagues in Cambridge on a great initiative!

Click here for full details.

Extracts:

Cambridge has become home to the first leadership forum for community-based ‘supplementary’ education, informal schools which provide extra education for children from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

The Cambridge Community School Leadership Forum, which met for the first time in November, is a collaborative space where community leaders, teachers and managers can share information and advice to support bilingual and migrant children.

Community-based heritage language schools are typically volunteer-run and often operate at weekends. They offer students from different cultures a safe and structured environment to learn about their background, usually by studying their ‘mother tongue’ languages and cultures.
There are thousands of community schools across the country, but without funding, some smaller schools have been forced to close.

There is evidence that the schools play a significant role in social integration: helping migrant children to settle into their new communities, and providing many students with a vital support network which helps them to navigate experiences of racism, discrimination and prejudice.

If you invest a little in these schools, they will repay that many times over in the contribution they make to wider educational goals.

BBC Future Voices Trainee Journalists

BBC World Service is launching a 6-week training scheme for young journalists who can speak a second language (or have a strong connection with that language community) - focussing entirely on HHCLs including French for Africa and Portuguese/Spanish for South America.

Details of the scheme are here.

Also they have produced a great short promo video featuring some of their young bilingual trainee journalists available on Twitter here.

Basic details:
• Apply by 7 January 2024
• Training lasts 6 weeks, starting 19 Feb or 13 May
• Takes place in London, Mon-Fri for the duration
• WIll be paid a salary for the duration
• Need to be 18+ at start of the training
• List of the 40 languages they are looking for:

Oromoo
Amharic
Arabic
Azeri
Bengali
Burmese
Chinese
Dari
Gujarati
Hindi
Igbo
Indonesian
Kinyarwanda
Kyrgyz
Korean
Farsi
French (for Africa)
Hausa
Marathi
Nepali
Pashto
Portuguese (for Latin America)
Pidgin
Punjabi
Russian
Sinhala
Somali
Swahili
Spanish (for Latin America)
Serbian
Tamil
Telegu
Thai
Tigrinya
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
Vietnamese
Yoruba

Keep up your Polish!

At the Language Show 2023 the Polish Embassy launched this video to encourage young people with Polish heritage to pursue their study of the language for all sorts of reasons! Please click here for full details.

Historic Black portraits recreated

Historic Black portraits recreated by Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop in his Project Diaspora.

Please click here to watch on YouTube.

Portuguese Digitisation

Camões UK, the Portuguese international organisation for cooperation and the promotion of Portuguese language and culture, to share the news that they have donated more than 2,000 tablets to schools across the UK to help students learn the Portuguese language.
This donation comes as part of a wider digitisation programme to help over 22,000 students access online tools and platforms that support their learning, and schools are still able to sign up to the programme and get involved.

Read the Press Release here.

European Day of Languages 2023

The British Council Languages Challenge covers a wide range of languages and issues.

Please click here for full details.

Express Yourself: NE Festival of Languages

The 2023 Festival was a great success, with over 20 000 children and young people engaged in language and cultural activities. You can read the report here.

The Mother Tongue, Other Tongue NE celebration again produced some lovely writing in a wide range of languages.

Please click here to watch a compilation video of the multilingual Festival song.

Critical Connections 2023

The Critical Connections project was established in 2012, and the related film festival 2023 took place at Goldsmiths University. The project involves young people (primary and secondary, learning Heritage Languages (HL) as well as Foreign Languages) in the UK and across the world (Australia, Cyprus, England, Germany, India, Italy, Malaysia and Taiwan) in creating and sharing short bi/multilingual films on a common theme, currently Our Planet. The films are shown at the annual film festival and can also be viewed online.

There is tremendous enthusiasm on the part of both students and teachers. This year a number of community based HL schools in Australia have participated. For 2 years a small community based Japanese HL group in Cambridge have participated and have created wonderful films.

The project is based on an innovative approach to language learning prioritising learner agency and collaboration, intercultural learning and active global citizenship, interdisciplinarity, a creative arts based approach and digital media skills.

You are warmly invited to look through this year’s film booklet and to view the films. The first film will give you an idea of how the project supports schools in including heritage languages and in promoting a multilingual approach to the curriculum. Please click here for more details.

A blog posted on the Forum of Heritage Language Coalitions in Europe (FOHLC) website looks at the significance of the project for heritage languages. Please click here for full details.

An article has been published online:
Macleroy, V., Anderson, J. & Chung Y-C. (2023)
Grassroots Policymaking in Practice: Including Heritage Languages in the Critical Connections Project through Agency, Activism and Alternative Voices, Current Issues in Language Planning.

Taylor & Francis Online: Grassroots policymaking in practice

Languages in Liverpool

Languages in Liverpool

As well as looking forward to the Eurovision Song Contest, the City of Liverpool has a great programme of other cultural, multilingual activities around Culture and Languages including EuroFestival in May, EuroLearn and EuroStreet with:

  • Festival of Europe – Celebrating the cultures and heritage of all Eurovision nationalities in the city region
  • Songs for Europe – Live participatory performances touring residential care settings
  • Solidarity Disco Banquets – Food, music and crafts at community-based feasts
  • Chess for Everyone – A huge pastime in Ukraine, celebrated with in-person and online games

Please click here for more information.

Rustam School

December 2022

Rustam has now topped its record of 300 students.

And the number going for the Persian exams has increased too!

9 Myths

9 Myths about Heritage Language Education - and infographic exploring common misconceptions from Heritage Language Education Network.

Please click here for full details.

More on 9 Myths

The HLEnet ‘9 myths’ poster has been translated into Farsi at the London-based Rustam Persian School. This has come to attention of Farsi online newspaper, Kayhan Online, who have interviewed Headteacher Shahla white about it. Please click here for full details.

Gisi Cannizzaro of the Heritage Language Network (Eindhoven, Netherlands):
Comments:
The fact that our infographic has been so well-received by this language community and the fact that it is having such an impact still has not sunk in all the way for me!

This is really impressive! We are so happy to learn that the infographic is considered so useful by this group.

It's ironic that the problem is lack of interest in GCSE and A-levels as here in the Netherlands they don’t even had such an option! There are only about 10 secondary school exams offered in a language other than Dutch or English and it's a crusade to get the schools to even consider offering options besides French and German. In other words, the availability of national exams in Farsi seems already like a victory. But I can easily understand the frustration that would accompany seeing not enough students take advantage of this option.

Persian school in London embraces HLE Network's "9 Myths" outreach tool

Siva Pillai, has translated 9 Myths poster into Tamil for the Heritage Language Education Network.

Projects at Pitsford School

Dr Carmen Cabrera Álvarez
writes to share two initiatives they have been developing at the secondary school where she works – Pitsford School in Northants.

The first project has been organised by our Year 13 students. They wanted to have a day where they could celebrate their heritage languages and cultures. We are a very small school, but our students have many home languages and cultures.

A group of Year 13 students organised a cultural awareness week, and then led an assembly in December where they explained their plans to the senior school.

Lots of activities took place including wearing clothes linked to cultural heritage, and bringing in foods to try. The week concluded with the School coming together to dance Jerusalema in the sports hall. Please for the full article.

Please click here to find out more.

Welcoming languages

Welcoming Languages: Including a Refugee Language in Scottish Education

This project explores the inclusion of a ‘refugee language’ in Scottish education as a way to enact the idea of ‘integration as a two-way process’ that is at the heart of the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy.

The project has involved education staff in learning Arabic to welcome new arrivals. The project report includes findings, such as:

Education staff who had been learning Arabic reported that they ' found that learning basic Arabic is practically useful: it allows them to use simple language to attract the children's attention; to give them some simple instructions; and to make connections between their learning in English and their existing knowledge.

Learning basic Arabic was found to have huge symbolic value. All staff interviewed told us that the Arabic speaking children greatly appreciated the efforts made by staff in their schools, and that they felt proud to be able to help staff practise Arabic.

Google plans giant AI language model supporting world’s 1,000 most spoken languages

Please click here for full details.

Council of Europe Recommendation

Council of Europe Recommendation defining plurilingual and intercultural education

Please click here for full details.

The Recommendation is accompanied by a more detailed, lengthier Explanatory Memorandum which makes the arguments for all of the issues raised in the Recommendation itself. You'll find this here.

Stories on the ALL website

UK International Cities 2021

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/research-practice/practitioner-focus/

Hola project

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/news/home-language-accreditation-project-hola/

A student’s view

In this article 16-year old Dev Atara from Guildford reflects on how his Gujarati speaking background has helped inspire his love of Spanish.

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/research-practice/practitioner-focus/

In Guest Blogs

Inclusion – one school’s work to support Gypsy-Roma students

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/research-practice/practitioner-focus/

In Guest Blogs

Multilingual map of Hull

Please click here to view.

Albanian bilingual book launch

‘Dea Starts School’ is, as one reader put it on Amazon, “a great book to further a sense of belonging and identification”.

Please click here for full details.

Bilingualism Matters

Find out the facts about acquiring, learning and using more than one language from experts around the world. Keep up to date with resources, events and news.

Please click here for more information.

Competitive Advantage - GCHQ 2022

GCHQ takes a great interest in languages and recently published this article about the advantage the UK has because of its linguistic diversity.

Please click here for full details.

GCHQ also offers language resources in a range of languages, to interest learners.

Please click here for full details.

Other good news stories

Mother tongue, Other tongue

https://www.mmu.ac.uk/mothertongueothertongue/

This award-winning competition encourages members of HHCL communities to celebrate their languages, and has several spin-offs in different parts of the country.

In 2021 the Express Yourself Festival of Languages in the North-East ran a Mother Tongue, Other tongue celebration event, resulting in an e-book in a variety of languages which you can access here: Sorry! Here it is:

https://read.bookcreator.com/aPFdJwL6yBQL1EtOM2cNOfHB3nD3/LozsfT0JTGKKanB3-WpmYw

The celebration is running again for schools and communities in the North-East in 2022:

https://expressyourselfne.com/2022/02/01/open-now-the-big-3-festival-creative-projects-for-north-east-schools-and-groups-and-advanced-bookings-for-events/

Skills of multilingual students

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/students-who-self-identify-as-multilingual-perform-better-at-gcse

How increasing languages education in the UK could benefit the economy

A research report from the University of Cambridge and RAND Europe shows that investing in languages education in the UK could return more than the investment cost.

Researchers explored a gap in the evidence relating to the economic benefits of extending languages education and found that an increase in secondary-school pupils learning one of four different languages could increase UK GDP by billions of pounds over 30 years.

Some headlines:
Researchers used a macroeconomic model to examine UK economic performance between now and 2050 if more pupils aged between 11 and 16—Key Stage 3 (KS3) and Key Stage 4 (KS4)—were to learn to speak one of four different languages which could later be used effectively in business.

The analysis demonstrated that a 10 per cent increase in UK pupils learning Arabic in KS3/KS4 could cumulatively increase UK GDP by between £11.8bn and £12.6bn over 30 years, compared to a baseline scenario in which the current levels of language provision in schools do not change. This corresponds to about 0.5% of the UK's GDP in 2019.

An increase in pupils learning Mandarin would increase GDP by between £11.5bn and £12.3bn. For French, the figure is between £9.1bn and £9.5bn, and for Spanish, between £9.1bn and £9.7bn.

The resulting findings of a 2:1 benefit-to-cost ratio for each language demonstrated that there are identifiable returns for investing in languages education, not just in economic terms but also in producing workers with the language skills needed for the UK to compete internationally.

Read more in the Research section of this page . 

Language Friendly School

The Language Friendly School movement introduces itself thus :

A school is a meeting place where students, parents and staff - often from diverse backgrounds - are united to share and build up knowledge. A Language Friendly School is an answer to the increasing multilingualism present in schools across the world; a result of people migrating to other places seeking employment, reuniting with loved ones or escaping war and conflict. Within a Language Friendly School, everyone welcomes and values all languages spoken by the students, the parents and the school stakeholders.

Read more here: https://languagefriendlyschool.org/

I feel very at home

In this Guardian article Saima Mir highlights the important role of supplementary schools.

Please click here for full details.

EYFOLNE MTOT 23

The Express Yourself North-East Festival of Languages 2023 is once again running a Mother Tongue, Other Tongue celebration.

The e-book from 2022 is available online. Please click here for full details.

New Language Policy in Jersey

Jersey has created a new Language Policy published by the Department for Children, Young People, Education and Skills (CYPES).

The Language Policy is part of a wider reform of Jersey’s education system and aims to bring the island "one step closer" to a more inclusive society.

More than 25% of students in Jersey schools are multilingual learners with English as an Additional Language, and the three most spoken languages of multilingual pupils in Jersey are Portuguese, Polish and Romanian.

“A child’s first language provides the roots to learn additional languages, and parents should be encouraged to continue to use their home languages to strengthen and support their children’s language proficiency,” the Policy states.

“Students must be encouraged and supported to value their home language and continue to develop proficiency in them, inside and outside the classroom.”

Please click here to read more.

Indigenous State of Mind: six music makers rapping in their mother tongues

Please click here for full details.

From refugee to CEO

A TED talk spotted by Siva Pillai: 'From refugee to CEO'

Children with developmental disabilities

Why being bilingual can open doors for children with developmental disabilities, not close them

Please click here for the full article.

Bilingual Education alliance website live

Bilingual Education alliance - England launches its website.

Leaders, governors, head teachers of bilingual schools as well as academics and specialists working in the field can join the BEA as Members.

Parents and the general public can join the Mailing list or make contact for further information.

Dreaming of Words

Dreaming of Words is the inspiring story of Njattyela Sreedharan, a school drop-out, who compiled a dictionary connecting four major Dravidian languages. Travelling across four states and doing extensive research, he spent twenty five years making the multilingual dictionary. This unique dictionary offers a comparative study of Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu.
Read more...

Soldiers' stories

Please click here for more information.

Raising the profile

YouTube clip showing Li Wei (Director of the Institute of Education) interviewing Michael Spence (UCL Provost) which makes a really good case for learning languages. Spence speaks Korean at home and has learned Chinese (and a bit of Welsh), in addition to the Italian from his first degree.

Multilingual Tyneside quiz

Success4ALL created a language quiz video for EYFoLNE 2023 with multilingual young people.

The quiz asks other young people to guess: the country, the language and Which 3 words are being taught by each presenter.

Here are the links to the guidelines and answers.

3D Languages

Preserving endangered languages as 3D shapes

Half of the world's languages are endangered and more than a thousand are expected to be lost in coming decades. A team at UCL is using animation software to preserve these languages in an entirely new way.

Please click here for full details.

Polish through art

Polish through art - an online exhibition.
Enjoy an online exhibition following a project run by Scottish CILT.

MTOT in the North-East 2022

The Express Yourself Festival of Languages North-East has had another great season.

One of the Big Three events was a Mother Tongue Other Tongue celebration once more , which is reported here :

https://expressyourselfne.com/2022/03/30/mtot-submissions/

UNESCO’s master class against Racism and Discrimination

'This international  event explored questions on discrimination based on gender, race and class. Participants were also invited to take part in intensive workshops on the topics of hate speech, antisemitism, negative perceptions of migrants and refugees, LGBTQ+ rights, systemic racism, the role of youth, intercultural competencies, and antiracism efforts in cities. Students from the North-East of England took part, leading the song from the Express Yourself North-East Festival of Languages'

https://expressyourselfne.com/2022/04/06/unesco-song/

Polish Stones / Polish Clubs

The tradition of cleaning graves on the 1st November is a significant Polish tradition, now connected with the Catholic Church. In 2021 children at the Polish school brought a stone/stones in, and then painted them in the Polish colours.

Later they went with their parents to tidy forgotten Polish graves at their local cemeteries  and after cleaning the graves they were allowed to leave their colour stoned on the grave as a symbol of remembering others.

Polish Clubs 2023 - please click here for full details of Polish After School Clubs.

International greetings and thoughts

ALL members send their best wishes to people across the globe affected by war, especially at this time in 2022 to those in Ukraine, and to the Ukrainians in the UK. We are thinking of our colleagues and friends from the international language teaching community and their students that are impacted by war and political conflicts.

Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain.

Azbuka School in London has issued a statement on Ukraine

'As educators, particularly as bilingual educators, we are preparing the future generations to build peace and understanding between cultures and nations.'

Azbuka is an international school. We have children, parents, teachers and governors who represent many languages and cultures: Russian, English, Ukrainian, French, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Bulgarian, Moldovan, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Chinese (among others).

We support and will always stand by the children, families and people of Ukraine, and all of those who have become victims of this unfolding tragedy.

You can read the full statement here.

 

Other great stories on the ALL website

These stories are of interest to teachers of all languages.

The AATT of curriculum planning

Report and webinar, with link to task-based learning modules available in a wide range of languages, and tools for language teachers, on the Design Space website.

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/research-practice/practitioner-focus/

In Guest Blogs

Teaching Adults

A range of articles on related topics

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/research-practice/practitioner-focus/

In the Teaching Adults section

Crossing Sectors

A range of articles about learners of all ages

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/research-practice/practitioner-focus/

In Crossing sectors

Languages and Skills

A range of articles about the contributions Languages make to the Skills agenda

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/research-practice/practitioner-focus/

In Languages and skills

Stories around bilingualism and EAL

Progress at the Bilingual Primary School, Hove

During the 2022-2023 school year, the children from our first 50:50 cohort moved into year 1 where we developed a 50:50 Spanish English curriculum to continue their progress and the first dual immersion cohort through the school. This has been supported by senior leaders; our bilingual consultant and by providing extra release time for staff to plan collaboratively and learn from successes.

Please click here to read more.

Bilingual Reading Comprehension

Please click here for full details.

British Academy

Publication:
Towards a National Languages Strategy: Education and Skills (with partners) - please click here.

News:
The British Academy backs calls for changing Census questions on multilingualism in the UK (2019) - please click here.

Blog:
The benefits of a bilingual brain in the modern world - please click here.

Podcast:
10-Minute Talks: More than one language – why bilingualism matters (includes a transcript) - please click here.

Guide for Parents of Bilingual Children

This bilingual Polish-English ‘Guide for Parents of Bilingual Children’ has chapters on issues such as:

  • To speak or Not To Speak
  • The role of parents and carers
  • Teaching through play and games
  • Speech – a Window to The World
  • Business studies and foreign languages

Please click here for full details.

The Bilingual Brain

BBC features the fascinating UCL bilingual brain project in the video here.
The main findings are remarkable!

Bilingualism Network

Bilingualism Matters (BM) is a growing community of international language experts engaging the public with the latest research about bilingualism and language learning.

The first ever Bilingualism Matters founded by Professor Antonella Sorace opened in 2008 at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

The website contains details of Events, News and Projects.

Please click here for more information.

Queen Katherine Academy Peterborough: How to peal-it

In this article Jane Driver describes the communication approach at QKA aiming to support students newly arrived in the country in accessing the curriculum.

For more information, please click the following links below:

P38 PEALit
P39 PEALit

Raising bilingual autistic children in the UK: at the intersection between neurological and language diversity

An interesting research article on raising autistic bilingual children in the UK.

Please click here for more information.

Bilingual Education Alliance

Launched in 2021

BEA is an informal network of school leaders, academics and policymakers to share best practice in bilingual education - including pedagogy, operations and funding. It will promote and disseminate insights to families and education professionals on the benefits of bilingual education; and engage with government and other relevant bodies on bilingual/multilingual education in the UK. It will support the broader advancement of foreign language teaching and learning; and advocate for education rooted in their linguistic and cultural backgrounds of families and communities.

Target audience : Schools with bilingual/multilingual education curricula (immersion curriculum, content and language integrated learning) operating in England

Activities
PRACTICE (WhatsApp group, meetings, e-mail list, conference) Joint training (bilingual education). Master classes, talks, seminars, annual conference Page 2 Networking and support (curriculum): teaching practices in bilingual classrooms in the context of immersion curriculum, moderation (teachers), curriculum development Network and support (administration) – policies (heads and governors); assessments and inspection (SLT, heads), parents and outreach (SLT, governors, heads), administration and funding (school governors, senior leadership teams, heads); employment/visas and HR (heads and governors) Network and support (parents and outreach) – admission, open days, school transfers and joint events

INFORMATION (Website, WhatsApp, e-mail, meetings, newsletter, annual conference) Database of schools with bilingual/multilingual curriculum operating in England and UK. Share and disseminating information about the advantages of bilingual and multilingual education (school). Talks, articles, webinars, video recording, podcasts. Sharing and disseminating research findings and good practice relating child multilingual development and bilingual education. Talks, articles, webinars, conferences, video recording, podcasts. Informal advice to other communities and groups: registration, administration and curriculum of a bilingual school

The BEA website is planned to launch on Spring 2022

QKA work with Roma communities

Thanks to Helena Ground at the ALL Peterborough Network based at Queen Katharine Academy for sharing her presentation.

EAL on Twitter

Please click here to view the EAL community on Twitter launched in 2022

Growing Up Bilingual

Growing Up Bilingual (GUB ) Project

Launched in 2018 this London-based project seeks to investigate multiple issues around bilingualism and bilingual education.

Please click here for further information.

Search for my tongue

Sujata Bhatt 'Search for My Tongue' read out by different actors. The poet then explains the clash of cultures she has experienced before reading an extract from the poem herself, and explaining how she thinks in both English and Gujarati.

Here is the famous poem by Sujata Bhatt.

Bell Foundation policy briefing

Policy Briefing: Education and employment outcomes of young people who use English as a second or additional language.

Please click here for full details.

Languages in the spotlight

In this section we begin a series spotlighting languages used and / or learnt by people in the UK.  In each spotlight piece there is reference to where teachers can get further advice and support for children in their schools / classes who speak the language concerned.

We welcome contributions from representatives of Language communities via [email protected]

A snapshot of Tamil in the UK serves as a model for others to write to: a brief Snapshot + (if appropriate) a Case Study + (if appropriate) Resources

Albanian Snapshot

There are a number of Albanian supplementary schools in the UK. The London-based ‘Shpresa Programme’ provides weekly classes in Albanian language and culture (including dance, sport, and other activities) for over 450 children in eight boroughs in and around London. It has done ground-breaking work in building partnerships with mainstream schools and has created a practical toolkit, ‘Shpresa Programme’s Supplementary School Toolkit’ to advise others wishing to establish such partnerships.

Please click here for further information.

Gujarati Snapshot

The Gujarati alphabet has 47 letters and the script is written from left to right. It is a phonetic script and therefore easier to read than English. There are some sounds in Gujarati which have no equivalent in English. There are no capital letters in Gujarati and no definite or indefinite articles. Every Gujarati noun has a gender.

Please click here for further information.

Polish Snapshot

The 2011 census states that Polish was the most common language used after English in England, and Welsh in Wales, with over half a million people reporting it as their primary language.

This video illustrates the year of the Polish School in Wembley.

Polish - SNAPSHOT

Polish Case Study

Read about the Polish Harry Potter and his missing mentor, Professor Ambrose Inkblot.

Polish Resources

Assembly time and form time can be used to broaden understanding of other languages and cultures.

The Polish Cultural Institute has launched some resources for teaching and learning about Poland, Polish people and Polish-British connections. There are a variety of resources including for MFL teaching and they are suitable for primary and secondary pupils. Most of them can be adapted by teachers to suit their teaching context. There are also lots of ideas for teaching in the resources and plenty of links to other high-quality resources to learn more about Poland and Polish people by clicking here.

The stories of ordinary people used in these wonderful resources ‘provide windows into Polish life, history, scientific achievement and culture.’

Bilingual Polish-English ‘Guide for Parents of Bilingual Children’ with chapters on issues such as :

  • To speak or Not To Speak
  • The role of parents and carers
  • Teaching through play and games
  • Speech – a Window to The World
  • Business studies and foreign languages

Please click here for more information.

In Polish

Polskiego jako drugiego w sobotniej szkole przedmiotów ojczystych w Wielkiej Brytanii.

In her article Maksi Kozińska describes the avantages of the project method of teaching Polish as a second language at Polish Saturday schools in the United Kingdom.

Portuguese Snapshot

The snapshot includes data, details of examinations in the UK, and contacts for supporting Portuguese in your school.

Please click here for further details.

Persian Snapshot

Persia is considered one of the cradles of civilisation and over thousands of years it has made huge contributions in the fields of art, architecture, poetry, science and technology, medicine, philosophy and engineering.

Please click here for more information.

Tamil snapshot

Tamil is one of the longest surviving classical languages in the world. It has its own script with 247 characters. Read more here:
Tamil-a snapshot

Tamil case study

Case Study : Tamil
The story of a project bringing together Tamil language and Dance in a Primary School
Tamil Case Study

Tamil case study resources

Case study resources: Tamil
The scheme of work and other resources for a Primary Dance/ Language project could be adapted for other languages.

Introductory note for edition of 2021
This project ran in the early years of the century before changes in Government resulted in the closing down several agencies and removed several documents from public use.

Here are some changes (errors and omissions excepted):
Attainment Levels were a feature of previous versions of the National Curriculum (NC - last revised in 2014).
Attainment Targets were defined by number (AT1) etc. in previous versions of the NC.
The programmes of study of the National Curriculum were revised in 2014. References in these documents are to the previous PoS.
Asset Languages was removed as an officially recognised accreditation during the 2010s.
The KS2 Framework for Languages is no longer an official document but can still be located.
QCA was the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority which was closed by the coalition Government, along with CiLT, the national centre for languages who published the ‘Curriculum Guide for Tamil’.
The National Strategies documents no longer have an official status.

Scheme of work - South Indian classical dance - ‘Bharatha Natyam’
Appendices- South Indian classical dance - ‘Bharatha Natyam’

Vietnamese Snapshot

The Vietnamese language is a tonal language and used to be written in a form of Chinese characters, but in the mid 17th century missionaries introduced a new writing system based on the Roman alphabet known as ‘Quoc-ngu’ (national language).

View the Vietnamese Snapshot here.

Yorùbá snapshot

Yorùbá has a rich and vibrant culture reflected in its food, dress, arts and crafts, music and dance. Amongst the most popular foods are Amala (yam-flour), Gbegiri (soup made from beans) and Ofada rice (natural rice). Dress for both men and women is vibrant and colourful with bold patterns as seen in the ankara designs. Drums, including ‘dunduns’, are prominent in Yorùbá music and dance.

A popular event is Yorùbá Arts Festival held in London’s Clissold Park each year.

For more information please click here.

Urdu Snapshot

Currently over 4000 students enter GCSE Urdu each year and over 300 take A Level.

Please click here for more information.

Portuguese Case Study

The 20th century witnessed the development of educational collaborations between Brazilian and Portuguese educators in the organization of cultural activities with the use of the Portuguese language. The 1960s marked a decade of significant presence of Portuguese migrants in the UK, which led groups of Portuguese parents to set up language lessons for their children in this country. Since the 1970s, the Portuguese government became responsible for running these lessons, nowadays organized by the Coordenação do Ensino Português, Instituto Camões. The Brazilian migration to the UK, becoming significant much later, had parents setting their first language lessons in the mid-1990s. Subsequently, the two Portuguese-speaking groups have engaged in mutual support. We highlight here two of the activities that have resulted from this successful partnership.

Click here to view the Portuguese Case Study

The Heritage Languages of the United Kingdom

Developments in Northern Ireland, around the Irish language:

Irish is a GCSE option in N.Ireland. In 2021 c 2000 students took the GCSE , as compared with c4000 for French or Spanish.

Annual Qualifications Insight 2021.

CCEA have yet to publish an insight report for 2021/22, but you can find the some stats here for the most recent assessment cycle.

The main organisation that promotes the Irish Language is Foras na Gaeilge.

One of the organisations that sits under the Foras na Gaeilge umbrella is Gael Linn.

They run competitions and Irish Language activities for Primary and Post Primary pupils in Northern Ireland - Twitter.

The Gaelic language in Ireland – Gaeilge, or Irish as it’s known locally – is a Celtic language and one of “the oldest and most historic written languages in the world” according to Foras na Gaeilge. Its poetic flow can be heard in schools across the country and throughout the shops, pubs, streets, fairs and festivals of the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking) regions.

In Northern Ireland, English is the first language. However, Ullans (Ulster-Scots) and Irish are both recognised as culturally significant, which is why you’ll find the arts and culture centre of Irish in Cultúrlann, and the Ulster-Scots Language Society (both in Belfast) showcasing Ulster-Scots writings.

And what is Ullans? Well, it’s a variant of Scots, the language brought to Ulster by Scottish settlers in the early 17th century. Scots is part of the West Germanic family of languages, a lovely lyrical tongue that’s taught these days in universities. In fact, you’ve probably already used some Ulster-Scots without even realising it. Have you heard of Scotsman Robert Burns? He penned the lyrics of that New Year’s Eve favourite: Auld Lang Syne, which translates as The Good Old Days.

Languages of Ireland.

This publication relates to Ireland (as opposed to Northern Ireland).

Other useful documentation from Ireland:

Digital version of the guidelines on creating educational capital from linguistic diversity (the second half is practical).

Resources to support career guidance counsellors in schools with encouraging maintenance of their foreign language both in school and at third level.

This is the Open Night Toolkit for use on open nights by MFL teachers.

If you look at the bottom of this page there are videos of people in industry and the workplace explaining why languages are important.

There is also a YouTube channel with many other videos, of young people too.

These language mats have been very popular and there is one for Ukrainian too.

 

Developments in Scotland, around Scots and the Gaelic language:

In early 2024 this article was publlshed in The Bookseller.

In early 2024 we received this copy of the Scottish languages Bill.

The Scots language policy.

For Scots, one of most popular resources is the animation here.

The Gaelic Language Act and the Gaelic Language Plan.

Key resources include a guide to Gaelic Medium Education (for parents, but is applicable for any interested teachers, as it details parents’ rights to have GME for their child).

Information from a Gaelic conference from a few years back. The central tenets have not changed - Gaelic (Learners) and how it fits with the national 1+2 languages policy. Please click here for full details.

Scots Language Board: What you need to know

 

Developments in Wales, around the Welsh language:

Welsh Language Act (1993)

Welsh is a compulsory curriculum subject up to GCSE level in Wales. Welsh is introduced as a second language in Year 3, and is typically given more weight than a second language would be in an English primary school.

Languages and the new Curriculum for Wales

Hwb is the central reference for resources and info in schools.

There is extensive and subsidised provision (with an approved scheme of learning and textbooks for adult learners) and the Welsh government has taken over developing the content for Welsh learning on Duolingo:

Learn Welsh

Duolingo Welsh course transfers to National Centre

Curriculum for Wales

Statistics for Welsh language

Concerns in 2022

Guest Blogs

One Voice? Many Languages

One Voice? Many Languages - The value of multilingualism in our modern world - Bernardette Holmes MBE

You can view the blog post here.

Supporting bilingual children

Anke Friedrich is the mother of two bilingual children and one of the co-founders of the German Saturday School Cambridge. Inspired by the experience of running a training day with other schools and a conversation with a group of Hungarian ladies who wanted to start their own school, Anke founded Cambridge Bilingual Groups. She describes here the impact this has had and gives recommendations for others thinking of creating similar support.

Please click here for more information.

The pain of language loss in families

‘I can’t say my own name’: The pain of language loss in families
Please click here to view the full article.

This poem by Noel Quiñones - ‘8 Confessions of my Tongue’ is referred to in the article
Please click here to view.

Forum of Heritage Language Coalitions in Europe
Communities in Times of Rapid Change

Vally Lytra (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Dr Effrosyni (Froso) Argyri (UCL Institute of Education) share stories about the role of technology in supporting community languages.

Please click here for the full details.

Equity? Why do community schools exist for some languages and not others?

Anke Friedrich gives her personal view on how community schools contribute to people's lives and what support others could offer them.

Please click here for full details.

Going from “have to” to “want to”

...when I’m thinking about HOW to teach some required content, the question I try to keep in mind to guide me is “Why would they want to do that?”

In this article, I will focus on how we can create engaging writing tasks that intrinsically motivate students.

Please click here to access the full article.

Ofelia Garcia

Ofelia is behind the development of this great website.

Social justice

Decolonising the curriculum

'Developments about equity between languages are also taking place in the USA.

Read more about the work of America's languages in the Research section.

This ALL Special Interest Group has its own webpage.

Media Cultured

Through the delivery of high quality films, workshops and exhibitions, Media Cultured strategically counters extremism and promotes social cohesion.

Specialising in education, safeguarding and equity programmes to promote social unity through sport, film and art.

Please click here for more information.

Permission to speak

Pearson has partnered with leading language educators and leaders through the Association for Language Learning Decolonise Secondary MFL Special Interest Group to address 'diversifying the MFL curriculum' and to create a new series that aims to illuminate the hidden stories of marginalised people and cultures.

Please click here for more information.

Support and opportunities for teachers

Designing for Translanguaging: the value of instructional routines

How can we support teachers to intentionally implement translanguaging pedagogies in their classrooms?

Please click here for full details.

Teaching Literacy to multilingual learners

Please click here for full details.

Hola

The Home Languages Accreditation project is run from King Edward VII School in Sheffield.

You will find a HOLA Q&A document in the section called 'Assessment and Accreditation' on this page. It describes how the project is run, and may inspire others to follow suit.

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/news/home-language-accreditation-project-hola/

Critical Connections: Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project
Language Acts and Worldmaking
Materials for Heritage Language Teaching

Materials for Heritage Language Teaching

This is a large scale initiative of the International Projects in Education (IPE) department of the Zurich University of Teacher Education (PH Zurich). The series offers an introduction to teaching methods currently used in Western and North European schools. The different volumes not only provide theoretical background information, but also numerous practical suggestions for daily teaching. The materials are available in a range of languages including Albanian, German, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish and Tamil as well as English and so far cover:

• Foundations and backgrounds
• Promoting writing in the first language
• Promoting reading in the first language
• Promoting speaking in the first language
• Promoting intercultural competence
• Teaching learning strategies and techniques

All the materials can be easily accessed and downloaded here.

CELM

The Reading University Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CELM) brings together a multidisciplinary group of researchers broadly interested in language, literacy and multilingualism.

They organise events within the local community in Reading, and online, with practitioners and other stakeholders. Please click here for full details.

They also have publications, and you can visit their outreach YouTube channel.

Lost Wor(l)ds

A website full of activities and ideas to help encourage and facilitate multilingualism. On this site, you will find:

  • Activities and resources that actively enable multilingual children to use their languages in formal education contexts, and for non-multilingual children to develop language awareness and utilise any growing understanding of modern foreign languages. Activities range in length from about half an hour to ideas that can take several weeks to implement as part of a scheme of work, and all activities include ideas for home/family communication, and making multilingualism and language awareness visible across the school.
  • “Stimulus Activities” – images to be used as starters, in form time, or to take the register, to expose children to fun vocabulary from around the world, enable multilingual children to use their languages, and encourage all children to increase language awareness.
  • A blog featuring book reviews, interviews, and highlighted activities – this is very much intended to be a community blog, and we would love to feature your school, and children’s results from working on any of our activities!
  • A growing set of academic resources

https://www.multilingualism-in-schools.net/

Creative Multilingualism

To view the main website please click here.

To view the Creative Multilingualism Performance Project article, please click here.

CLIL

This ALL Zone is for teachers interested in developing some sort of Content and Language Integrated Learning approach , i.e. teaching other curriculum content through the medium of another language than English.

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/research-practice/clil-zone/

TALES : Stories for Learning

TALES’s mission:

To investigate the impact of oral and digital storytelling in formal education and to create a set of cognitive tools to empower teachers to introduce storytelling into their practice effectively.

TALES wants to create an innovative educational approach to be introduced and applied Europe wide.

The main aim of the project is to develop new teaching methods and materials involving storytelling and include them as innovative approach and new content in initial and in-service teacher training courses.

Online training activities are available from the website, along with a manual aimed at teachers and teacher trainers on how to implement storytelling practices into formal education.

Shpresa Partnership Toolkit

Toolkit developed by Shpresa with funding from Paul Hamlyn about building partnerships between mainstream and supplementary schools.

Shpresa Programme (Shpresa) is a charity that promotes the participation and contribution of Albanian-speaking refugees and migrants in the UK. Through our services and projects, we encourage and support individuals and families to play a positive and active role in British society.

Please click here for full details.

Critical Connections online professional development workshops

Critical Connections online professional development workshops are now ready for you to download from the project website.

Please note:
1. A first step, especially for those new to multilingual digital storytelling should be to look at the Critical Connections: Handbook for Teachers.
2. Workshops are based on experience of working on the project over the years and includes input from teachers.
3. There is material aimed at colleagues new to digital storytelling as well as those operating at a more advanced level.
4. We recognise that contexts in which the Critical Connections project is taking place differ in various ways and the resource is intended to be used flexibly.
5. Comments and suggestions are welcome.
6. Downloading workshops works best with Google Chrome

The World of Languages and Languages of the World (WoLLoW)

The WoLLoW resources and lesson content have been created to encourage children to be curious about languages, to understand the links and see the patterns between languages, and to help them to think about how a language works.

https://theworldoflanguages.co.uk/

Here is an article (May 2022) about the progress of the WoLLoW project and its aims.

You can view a short film about WoLLoW here.

Guidelines from Scoil Bhríde primary school, Dublin

The guidelines from Scoil Bhríde primary school, Dublin could be very helpful for primary schools and teachers. The book and chapter provide further scholarly underpinning.

Language and Languages in the Primary School: Some guidelines for teachers.
(David Little and Déirdre Kirwan, 2021)
Based on groundbreaking work at Scoil Bhríde primary school, Dublin, these guidelines by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan are aimed at primary school teachers and principals. They are designed to help respond to the challenges of the Primary Language Curriculum, include the home languages of EAL pupils in the activities of classrooms, and develop pupils’ intercultural learning. Please click here for full details.

See also a recent book by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan (2019) Engaging with Linguistic Diversity – A Study of Educational Inclusion in an Irish Primary School. London: Bloomsbury.

Déirdre Kirwan (2020) Converting Plurilingual Skills into Educational Capital. Learn: The Journal of the Irish Learning Support Association, pp.35-55. Please click here for full details.

News from NRCSE 2022

In April 2022 the YPF Trust and NRCSE are coming together in support of supplementary schools and out of school settings.

The work, staff and resources of NRCSE will move across to YPF Trust and form the foundations of a new and exciting programme of work building on the legacy of place-based investment and community support provided by NRCSE since 2012, reaching thousands of children and young people across the country.

The supplementary education sector is a vital part of many children, young people and community’s lives across the country – yet the work remains undervalued and under-resourced.

Please click here for more information.

Latest from NCRSE

https://ypftrust.org.uk/news-events/entry/update-on-nrcse-and-ypf-trust

 

Multilingual Approaches through Art

Multilingual Approaches through Art (MtA) activity pack has now been published. It contains a series of 10 creative activities which aim to inspire teachers and language educators to use art-based approaches in their teaching of languages.

MtA is a collaborative initiative between the University of Glasgow, Scotland’s National Centre for Languages and Bilingualism Matters. A key aspect of the project was a shift towards understanding and valuing multilingualism as the key pathway towards fostering connected communities in challenging times. cards_digital_final.pdf (wordpress.com).

Lavinia Hirsu from the University of Glasgow, co-author of the MtA activity pack has a website with lots of interesting resources and ideas that support multilingualism and multilingual approaches such as translanguaging etc. Please click here for full details.

Toolkit

Blog with links to the latest resources

Assessment and Accreditation

Language Ladders

‘Language ladders’ show promise for introducing multilingual instruction in classrooms.

Please click here for more information.

CLEX Entries 2022

Unfortunately CLEx has not been approved to hold GCSEs in Summer 2022.

We are awaiting news about the provision of A-level examinations.

USA Seal of Biliteracy

The vision of this initiative is to help students recognize the value of their academic success and see the tangible benefits of being bilingual.

The Seal of Biliteracy is an award given by a school, district, or state in recognition of students who have studied and attained proficiency in two or more languages by high school graduation.

Please click here for full details.

HOLA Q&A

HoLA encourages mainstream schools to enter their students for these qualifications and sometimes works with supplementary schools and directly with parents to provide access to accreditation. The Project currently works with speakers of more than 18 languages, predominantly by providing expert speakers, to mark language mock exams and facilitate speaking exams.

Please click here to read more.

SEG Awards

Skills and Education Group Awards

This body offers accreditation (under the heading 'Practical Languages' on the webpage for languages) advertised for : Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish .

Please click here for more information.

Contact:
Daniel Moult
Centre Support Officer
Skills and Education Group
T. 0115 854 1326
E. [email protected]

ASDAN

The Languages Short Course was developed in partnership with the Association for Language Learning (ALL), aimed mainly, but not exclusively, at supporting core subjects in schools. The Languages Short Course accredits between 10 and 60 hours of foreign language studies and activities and provides a curriculum that can lead towards, enhance and support GCSEs and the EBacc.

You can use it:
• as an introductory or companion course for young people at various ages and stages in their language learning
• to build and underpin academic excellence in language studies, e.g. as a foundation for EBacc
• for learners of all abilities, in all languages to enjoy and achieve
• in flexible ways to suit your situation
• for certificates of achievement in a wide variety of language-learning activities
• to help young people see the relevance of language learning – to contextualise, enthuse, intrigue, develop skills, deepen knowledge, understanding and communication and build confidence

This Short Course can be completed using the student book or is available for learners to complete online through the ASDAN e-portfolio system. Learners log in to complete challenges, record skills development and upload evidence. Tutors can view learner progress and sign off work, leaving feedback as needed.

Please click here for further information.

Latest from Pearson; Ukrainian

Pearson has published new guidance on using the EPQ to help Ukrainian students work towards a qualification which can complement their studies in the UK.

The EPQ can also be used for students to explore the cultural heritage of their own or other people in their community, as well as allowing students to pursue an interest or passion outside of the curriculum. Please click here for further information.

Level 3 Extended Project Qualification in Ukrainian
A qualification pathway for Ukrainian students in the UK.

Please click here for further information.

British Council / QFI pilot with Avant and Seal of Biliteracy

The British Council and QFI are piloting a new initiative with Avant Assessment and the Seal of Biliteracy, this pilot will involve up to 200 Arabic learners of all levels sitting an assessment and getting an accreditation based on the CEFR.

We believe that this will have benefits for pupils in terms of motivation and also for teachers as it will give them a detailed diagnostic report on their pupils. Many state schools, school districts and supplementary schools in the US use this test.

Look out for the results of the pilot later in the year.

Resources

ASCL papers 2022

Supporting students with home, heritage and community languages

In schools in England, one in five pupils are known to bring lived experience of at least one other language and culture to the classroom. Currently, there are over 360 languages spoken in school settings. In the global and interconnected society of today, the ability to communicate in more than one language and to be culturally aware represents a significant asset.

ASCL MFL Consultant Suzanne O’Farrell, together with Dr Jim Anderson, Goldsmiths, University of London, Bernardette Holmes MBE, Vice President CIOL Hon FCIL, and Dr Farah Nazir, Lecturer in Linguistics, Newcastle University, have produced guidance for mainstream secondary and primary schools in supporting school communities to realise the value of bilingualism and to support mainstream schools in facilitating home language exam entries for their pupils.

These papers focus on supporting students with their heritage languages in mainstream contexts:

1. Secondary
Web page
Paper

2. Primary
Web page
Paper

Resources to support linguistically and culturally inclusive practices in primary and secondary schools

The document is intended to sit alongside the two ASCL documents for secondary and primary schools (the latter still in development) . It emphasises the significant work that has taken place internationally in this area recently, which amounts to a real shift in practical support for schools concerned to address issues of linguistic diversity in education.

Resources to support linguistically and culturally inclusive practices in primary and secondary schools v2

WAM - We Are Multilingual

WAM (We are multilingual) arises out of the work on multilingual identity carried out by the Education Strand of the MEITS project (Multilingualism Empowering Individuals Transforming Societies).

Please click here for more information.

Roles and connections of supplementary schools

This constructive report recommends a number of measures to support supplementary schools.
Nwulu, S. (2015) Beyond the School Gates: Developing the roles and connections of supplementary schools. London: RSA Action and Research Centre.

https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/reports/supplementary-schools-report-sept-2015.pdf

British Council / ASCL Guide on bilingual education

https://www.ascl.org.uk/discoveringlanguage

british-council-parents-guide-to-bilingualism-en-2016
(find from websearch)

https://www.britishcouncilschool.es/en/services/support/bilingualism-guide
(Spanish only)

Classtag - communicating with parents

For teachers who want to communicate with EAL parents, the app called Classtag is a free online tool that helps teachers send messages home including newsletters, group and 1-1 messaging, sign-up sheets, etc.

It will automatically translate all of the communication into a parent's preferred language. Parent replies are translated back to English.

Please click here for more information.

Multilingual Performance Project

Drama lovers click here.

The Heritage Language Exchange: A resource for and by teachers
SICLE

The Sydney Institute for Community Languages Education (SICLE) has established this portal to bring together available resources to support teaching both in out-of-hours community languages schools and primary and secondary schools.

Please click here for more information.

Please click here to visit the SICLE website.

Pictograms

Please click here to be taken to a website with pictograms searchable by theme, for use in the classroom, can be changed over multiple languages (spotted on Twitter - thanks @lewizrs).

Cognitive effects of bilingualism in childhood

Recent paper on cognitive effects of bilingualism in childhood. Colleagues analysed evidence for bilingual language environment effects on cognition in the Millennium Cohort Study-data from more than 16,000 child participants!

Please click here for more information.

Challenges and opportunities for learners

Mother tongue, Other tongue

https://www.mmu.ac.uk/mothertongueothertongue/

This celebration is also run by others regionally, including in 2022 the Express Yourself North-East Festival of Languages.

A report on the 2021 event is here:

https://expressyourselfne.com/2021/03/29/mother-tongue-other-tongue-a-poetic-outpouring/

The e-book anthology  from 2021 is here:

https://read.bookcreator.com/aPFdJwL6yBQL1EtOM2cNOfHB3nD3/LozsfT0JTGKKanB3-WpmYw

Details of the  2022 event in the North-East :

https://expressyourselfne.com/2022/02/01/open-now-the-big-3-festival-creative-projects-for-north-east-schools-and-groups-and-advanced-bookings-for-events/

The ENACT Web App Prizes 2022

The ENACT Web App Prizes will be awarded to the people who upload the best cultural activities for language learning using the ENACT ‘CREATE’ author software during the period 16 May to 25 July 2022.

The First Prize consists of a payment of £200 plus a ENACT Web App Gold Certificate. There is also a Prize for Best Materials for an Endangered Language and Culture (£100) and a Prize for Best Materials for Ukrainian Language and Culture (£100).  Both will also receive an ENACT Web App Silver Certificate. All materials will feature on the front page of all ENACT media and the activities will be promoted around the world on the website.

The cultural activity for language learning can involve learning any language and any cultural activity. There is no cost to making an entry.

To enter for the ENACT Web App prize:

  1. Watch the video tutorials on how to create your own cultural activity on https://enacteuropa.com/?q=getting-started
  2. For an example of a good cultural activity, tryKaragöz (Turkish) .
  3. Create a login on https://enacteuropa.com/node/add/h5p-contentto use the CREATE author software to create your interactive content.
  4. Gather your materials and equipment as well as your recording equipment, perform your cultural activity and record it.
  5. Enter all of your video and audio files, photos and text in ‘create your interactive content’ to form a complete cultural activity.
  6. If your language is not listed, choose ‘other’ and then write the name of your language in the ‘tag the activity with keywords’ box.
  7. Tick ‘publish’ at the bottom when the activity is finished.
  8. When you see your activity appear on LEARN https://enacteuropa.com/all-contentthis means that you have successfully uploaded your activity. It may take a day to upload onto the server.
  9. Then email us on [email protected]to say you wish to enter the 2022 ENACT Web App contest. Give us a) your name b) the name and language of your cultural activity as it appears on ENACT c) which of the 3 prizes you are entering for d) your preferred email address for contact.

Entries will be judged during August 2022 and the winner and runners-up announced on 5 September 2022.

The criteria for evaluating the language learning recipes will be:

  • How easy is it for learners of the language to follow the instructions and to create the cultural activity?
  • To what extent does the activity help users learn aspects of the language and culture?
  • What is the quality of the video and audio files, photos and text in relation to learning this language and culture?

Entry to the competition is open to all and is free. However, staff of Newcastle University and all partners in the ENACT Europa project may not enter or contribute to any entries.

A flyer is attached.

European Day of Languages (EDoL)

Every year on 26 September the EDoL includes activities and celebrations in all sorts of languages around Europe and in the UK.

https://edl.ecml.at/Participate/Downloads/tabid/3156/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

To celebrate the landmark of 20 years EDoL in 2021, a series of features/initiatives is available on the EDoL website:

https://edl.ecml.at/

A new secret agent’s language challenge app

Following the success of the language challenges handbook (now available in 29 languages) and a first version of an app last year, version ‘2.007’ of the app will be much more interactive, with budding secret agents able to compete with their counterparts. There are a series of levels to sort out the Inspector Gadgets from the true top agents!

https://edl.ecml.at/

A quiz currently being developed together with the European Commission will form part of this app. The new version will be available for download for both Android and Apple phones as well as for Chromebooks from early September.

A journey across Europe’s languages

This downloadable booklet seeks to encourage interest in Europe’s rich tapestry of languages from an early age. Children can accompany Lara on her journey to discover the different languages spoken across the continent. Sets of stickers and sound files covering the respective languages are also available for this resource which will be available in English in July with translations/adaptions into other languages following shortly afterwards: see https://edl.ecml.at/languagejourney .

An EDoL infographic for download with 20 facts you might not know about Europe’s languages.

And as we are not over the pandemic yet, a list of ideas for organising events which respect social distancing is available.

https://edl.ecml.at/

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/news-events/challenges-and-competitions/

 

Raising the profile

Competitions

Competitions are announced in the weekly ALLNet message to ALL Members and listed on the website:

Challenges and Competitions 

 

Settings

Organising support for local community schools

Suggestions for what an individual, a mainstream school, a council or other organisations can do to assist the whole of their local community schools for bilingual children. based on experience in starting a school and subsequent interactions with other local community schools over many years.

Please click here for more information.

HLENET

The HLENET website describes networks of community language settings across a number of countries, under the 'Articles' tab.

Safeguarding Guidance

Safeguarding - non-statutory guidance

The Department for Education published the following guidance - Keeping children safe in out-of-school settings: code of practice - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk), to support out-of-school setting providers to understand what they need to do to run a safe setting. They also published accompanying guidance for parents - Guidance for parents and carers on safeguarding children in out-of-school settings - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk), setting out positive signs and red flags to look out for, in order to help them make more informed choices when selecting out-of-school settings for their children.

Out-of-school settings are unregulated under education and childcare law and generally provide tuition, training, instruction or activities outside normal school hours (for example, evenings, weekends, school holidays). Examples range from sports clubs to Scouts, as well as religious organisations and tuition centres.

You can discover more on this theme in the report on the HHCL Webinar May 22, in Recent Events.

Saturdays for success

Mainstream schools can benefit in a number of ways from the work of the UK's many community-led educational programmes. This report makes recommendations for how more pupils, schools and communities can gain from the rich, extracurricular learning environments that these 'supplementary schools' offer.

Please click here for more information.

Curriculum Planning

Brighton Bilingual School

Welcome to The Bilingual Primary School

Please click here to visit the school website.

Bilingual Education Alliance

https://bilingualprimaryschool.org.uk/brighton-hove/primary/bilingualprimaryschool

UCL Bilingo / Bilingualism Matters
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bi-multilingualism/

CLIL
A general introduction to the principles and practice of Content and Language Integrated Learning along with pointers to many projects and reference points.
https://www.all-languages.org.uk/research-practice/clil-zone/

ELAPSE is the product of an Erasmus+ project addressing issues of integrating Language across the curriculum
lfee.net/elapse

The research group FLAME (Film, Languages and Media in Education) at Manchester Metropolitan University and FILTA (Film in Language Teaching Association) presented a special webinar as part of the series: Screen Media and Language Teaching and Learning:

"Developing Intercultural awareness through film and anime: some examples from a CLIL course in Japan" by Dr Barry Kavanagh (Associate professor at Tohoku University, Japan) (13 November 2021)

https://mmutube.mmu.ac.uk/media/Webinar+_Developing+Intercultural+awareness+through+film+and+anime_+some+examples+from+a+CLIL+course+in+Japan_+13+November+-20211113_101449-Meeting+Recording/1_gb71ixgy

With the abolition of CILT and Central Books, the Curriculum guides are no longer available in hard copy. Electronic versions of the guides for Arabic, Mandarin, Panjabi and Tamil are available here:
https://www.gold.ac.uk/clcl/multilingual-learning/curriculum/

A range of other resources relevant to community languages are available at:
https://www.gold.ac.uk/clcl/multilingual-learning/

The Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools (US)
https://www.heritagelanguageschools.org/coalition

Curriculum for Wales

Curriculum for Wales 2022
At its heart are four purposes:
• ambitious, capable learners, ready to learn throughout their lives
• enterprising, creative contributors, ready to play a full part in life and work
• ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world
• healthy, confident individuals, ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of
society

“The Curriculum for Wales guidance aims to help each school develop its own curriculum, enabling their learners to develop towards the four purposes of the curriculum – the starting point and aspiration for every child and young person in Wales.”

Within this MFL has undergone a rebranding and an evolution, in order to embrace a broader ideal: “In addition to Welsh and English, all learners should have the opportunity to learn at least one international language at school and to use other home languages and community languages they may speak. Settings and schools should encourage learners to use their plurilingual skills and learners should recognise the value of being able to use different languages ... learners can enhance their linguistic and intercultural awareness by being exposed to multiple languages.”.

Quotations from ‘Curriculum for Wales guidance’

Please click here for the full article.

Developing Intercultural awareness through film and anime

"Developing Intercultural awareness through film and anime: some examples from a CLIL course in Japan" by Dr Barry Kavanagh (Associate professor at Tohoku University, Japan) (13 November 2021).

Please click here for further information.

The AATT of curriculum planning

Report and webinar, with link to task-based learning modules available in a wide range of languages, and tools for language teachers, on the Design Space website.

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/research-practice/practitioner-focus/
In Guest Blogs

UCL Bilingo / Bilingualism Matters

Please click here for full details.

Curriculum Guides

With the abolition of CILT and Central Books, the Curriculum guides are no longer available in hard copy. Electronic versions of the guides for Arabic, Mandarin, Panjabi and Tamil are available here.

A range of other resources relevant to community languages are available here.

Discovering Language

Discovering Language is a multi-language progression model which has been developed by ASCL with support from the Esmee Fairburn Association.

Please click here for further information.

CLIL

A general introduction to the principles and practice of Content and Language Integrated Learning along with pointers to many projects and reference points. Please click here.

ELAPSE is the product of an Erasmus+ project addressing issues of integrating Language across the curriculum. Please click here.

The research group FLAME (Film, Languages and Media in Education) at Manchester Metropolitan University and FILTA (Film in Language Teaching Association) presented a special webinar as part of the series: Screen Media and Language Teaching and Learning.

The Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools (US)

Please click here for more information.

Research and Publications

Raise the Bar - US Department of Education

U.S. Department of Education:
Raise the Bar: Lead the World
…  the U.S. Department of Education's call to action to transform education and unite around what truly works—based on decades of experience and research—to advance educational equity and excellence.

Raising the bar means recognizing that our nation already has what it takes to continue leading the world—if we deliver a comprehensive, rigorous education for every student; boldly improve conditions for learning; ensure every student has a pathway to multilingualism and to college and careers; and increase college affordability and completion so more Americans can reach their dreams.

Raise the Bar: Click Here

Raise the Bar - Multilingualism Pathways: Click Here

UK Census 2021

Language, England and Wales: Census 2021

Main language, English language proficiency, and household language in England and Wales, Census 2021 data.

Please click here for more details.

Teenagers on their home languages

Teenagers on What Their Families’ Native Languages Mean to Them

Please click here for full details.

Research from Scotland

Scottish CILT

Languages in the community statistics.

Languages Education Network Scotland (LENS)
LENS is a resource bank of studies and research findings from national and international contexts. These findings help us to unravel the complexities of language teaching and learning and why things happen the way they do in classrooms. Key messages from over 300 studies have been organised according to specific themes relating to language teaching and learning in the curriculum.

Please click here for more information.

American Languages Portal

America’s Languages Working Group Launches New Online Resource

During the past two years, as the USA has faced both a global pandemic and an increase in domestic unrest, the need to communicate in all of America’s languages—all the languages spoken across the country—has become even more apparent. Language access has become a central challenge to the equitable provision of health care, to matters of civil justice, and to the basic operations of our civic institutions.

To help connect educational innovations with the learners who want and need them most, the America’s Languages Working Group is now launching a brand new, first-of-its-kind online resource. The America’s Languages Portal: Model Programs and Practices Advancing Access and Equity in U.S. Language Education (www.americaslanguages.org) is a registry of programs that can be emulated and adapted by on-the-ground efforts across the country to introduce students from diverse populations to effective language instruction.

Please click here for more information.

How increasing languages education in the UK could benefit the economy

A research report from the University of Cambridge and RAND Europe shows that investing in languages education in the UK could return more than the investment cost.

Researchers explored a gap in the evidence relating to the economic benefits of extending languages education and found that an increase in secondary-school pupils learning one of four different languages could increase UK GDP by billions of pounds over 30 years.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RBA1814-1.html 

Research from CLIE

Research from CLIE: A page of research evidence that L1 and L2 support each other.

Please click here to view resources on comparing FL with English.

Cognitive effects of bilingualism in childhood

Recent paper on cognitive effects of bilingualism in childhood. Colleagues analysed evidence for bilingual language environment effects on cognition in the Millennium Cohort Study-data from more than 16,000 child participants!

Please click here for more information.

Guiding Principles for Dual Language Education

Guiding Principles for Dual Language Education - available as a free PDF on the Center for Applied Linguistics website.

Creative multilingualism, Languages in the Creative Economy

Strand 4 - Creative Economy

Please click here for full details.

The power of language

‘The Power of Language’: 5 ways multilingual brains work differently

Please click here for full details.

Research summaries from OASIS

The Open Accessible Summaries In Language Studies (OASIS) initiative aims to make research findings on language learning and teaching available and accessible to a wide audience.

OASIS summaries are one-page descriptions of research articles on language learning, language teaching, and multilingualism that have been published in peer-reviewed journals listed on the Social Science Citation Index or the Arts and Humanities Citation Index. The summaries provide information about the study’s goals, how it was conducted, and what was found, and are written in non-technical language. Where relevant, they also highlight findings that may be of particular interest to language educators, although the initiative is not solely aimed at research with immediate practical implications. The summaries are generally approved, and often (co-)written, by the author(s) of the original journal article.

Bilingualism matters

Bilingualism Matters is a research and information centre at the University of Edinburgh, founded by Prof. Antonella Sorace in 2008.

‘Find out the facts about acquiring, learning and using more than one language from experts around the world. Keep up to date with resources, events and news from our network of branches and members.’

Please click here for full details.

Global Future: Silenced Voices

“Silenced Voices” revealed how thousands of BAME students were at risk of being denied GCSEs and A-Levels in community languages in 2021.

Please click here for further information.

Farah Nazir - Researcher

Farah Nazir is a researcher at Newcastle University looking into issues in Mutilingualism.

Her website is currently down , but please click here to view articles.

Reading in the home language for multilingual children

HLEnet has produced this ‘bookmark’ on 'Reading in the home language for multilingual children'.

Scaffolding Language Development in Immersion and Dual Language Classrooms

Home / Heritage / Community Languages Group

 

Terms of Reference
December 2021

Name
The Home / Heritage / Community Languages Advisory Group is an informal standing group hosted by the  British Council and ALL (who also share the Chairing and Secretariat). Members are invited for their broad experience rather than being tasked with representing/advocating for particular languages.

Purpose
The group is a focal point for strategic and practical issues relating to Home / Heritage / Community Languages in mainstream and supplementary education and other settings.
The membership is a collaborative working community of institutions and individuals who have related  knowledge and expertise.
In short, it exists to support and advocate for Home / Heritage / Community Languages.

Scope
The group aims to work collaboratively ;--

  • To provide a forum for the discussion of issues related to community languages for the group and invited guests , including on future issues
  • To produce and disseminate resources online to support community languages, including key / core messages for sharing
  • To  manage and promote events and networking opportunities
  • To produce a directory of national language associations
  • To advocate for Home / Heritage / Community Languages within available capacity
  • To link the local and national expertise in Home / Heritage / Community languages in the UK nations with a broader international platform for knowledge exchange and cooperation
  • To support the establishment of national and local arrangements for the recognition, validation and accreditation of all languages spoken in the UK against clearly defined and quality assured standards.

Members of the HHCL group
This webpage is hosted by ALL on behalf of the advisory group for HHCL. The informal group is chaired by Steven Fawkes and Vicky Gough and consists of:

Jim Anderson Hannah Jack
Bernadette Clinton Steven Fawkes
Vicky Gough Yvonne Foley
Philip Harding-Esch Luma Hameed
Maksi Kozinska Antonella Sorace
Terry Lamb Bernardette Holmes
Mon Partovi Yongcan Liu
Pascale Vassie Siva Pillai
Karen Foley Kat Przybycien
Sabine Little

With thanks to other founder members of this group: Laura Church and Neil Kenny.