Session 4E

Situated at the gateway of one of the most important trading routes across the Alps, the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol (Italy) has always been a multicultural and multilingual region. Today, multilingualism in South Tyrol neither only refers to the three officially recognised languages, i.e. German, Italian and Ladin, nor is it limited to formally taught foreign languages such as English and French, but also comprises the languages of origin of those who have (more or less) recently settled in the region. 
In order to investigate how children acquire, use and maintain their linguistic repertoire in a multilingual setting such as South Tyrol, a longitudinal study within the project "One School, Many Languages" accompanied 154 students from eight middle schools over a period of three years (2015-2018), from their first (year 6) to their final year of middle school (year 8). A particular focus was on pupils who do not speak any of the languages of instruction or school in their families and thus face special challenges on their educational path.
Within these three years, a broad range of quantitative as well as qualitative data was collected based on a variety of instruments within different communicative settings (a.o. Council of Europe 2001, 2012, 2018; Grotjahn 2014; Grießhaber 2006, 2012; Gogolin et al. 2011): 1) written and oral language assessment via C-tests and profile analysis to document language development in the languages of schooling; 2) ethnographic and systematic observation in and outside of the classroom to capture everyday interactions; 3) qualitative interviews with teachers and 4) quantitative background questionnaires for students in order to uncover extra-linguistic factors. 
However, in order to describe the development of purilingual competence, one first needs to be clear as to how and to which extent the child has already acquired the languages of schooling. These linguistic prerequisites are traditionally accounted for in categorizing the child's languages as first, second or third language(s). However, the results of the study indicate that categorizing middle-school children in South Tyrol as mono-, bi- or plurilingual might be an overgeneralization of a much more diverse reality. What is more, the interpretation of results based on the categorisation of children along their first, second and third languages reinforces dominant narratives in view of allochthonous and autochthonous language communities which systematically disadvantages students with other first languages. 
In my presentation, I will adopt a different approach to the categorisation of young language learners based on the individual learning growth that students make over the course of their school careers by comparing the test results of the first year with those of the third year. In doing so, the results of the study are able to contradict (stereo)typical misconceptions of new language speakers and show that in the context of the present study, other factors must be taken into account for students' learning success.

The study investigates the use of oral communication strategies (OCSs) as a factor mediating L2 speaking proficiency.
Eleven learners of French speaking Swedish as a first language were asked to watch six short cartoons and present their contents in as much detail as possible. All participants were at a Pre-Intermediate or Intermediate level and have completed a Placement test prior to performing the task. The resulting set of narratives has been analyzed with a specific aim of identifying the word searching situations (excerpts illustrating how participants tackle problems caused by lexical deficiencies) and the strategies used. Additionally, each set of narratives has been evaluated in terms of its informational density (the completeness of narrative and the number of details conveyed in a comprehensible manner). The analyses performed (both quantitative and qualitative) aimed at establishing which factors contribute to communicative success.
The specific rhetoric and discourse building devices that have been identified as communication strategies are based on the taxonomy from Nakatani (2006), however, other frameworks (e.g. Dörnyei and Körmos 1998) are also discussed. One important modification that I made with regards to Nakatani (2006) framework is that I am using the term Message Modification instead of Message Alteration since the data clearly shows that modifying the message does not necessarily mean reducing its "quality". In fact, one of the key findings that I would like to convey is that the learners can be incredibly creative and tap into a wealth of resources (both linguistic and non linguistic) in order to achieve communicative efficiency. Furthermore, taken on a case by case basis, the data shows a variety of individual styles adopted by learners to tackle lexical problems.
In line with some previous studies (Bialystok & Fröhlich, 1980; Fernández Dobao, 2001; Safont Jordá, 2001) it seems to be the case that more proficient learners are also using OCSs more frequently and at a higher level of efficiency. In fact, the use of OCSs that are especially instrumental (such as various types of reformulation) seems to be a far better predictor of communicative efficiency than vocabulary tests scores. It follows that acquiring a foreign language entails becoming a proficient user of OCSs and an important pedagogical implication is that explicit training in using such strategies can be highly beneficial, especially at Intermediate levels.


References:
Bialystok, E. & Fröhlich. M. (1980). Oral communication strategies for lexical difficulties. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin, 5, 3-30. 
Dörnyei, Z. & Kormos, J. (1998). Problem-solving mechanisms in L2 communication. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20(3), 349-385.
Fernández Dobao, A. M. (2001). Communication strategies in the interlanguage of Galician students of English: The influence of learner- and task- related factors. Atlantis, 2(1), 41-62.
Nakatani, Y. (2006). Developing a Oral Communication Strategy Inventory. The Modern Language Journal, vol. 90(2), 151-168.
Safont Jordá, M. P. (2001). An analysis on the use and selection of communication strategies by Catalan/Castilian learners of English. Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata, 1(1), 57-72.

As the number of multilingual students in classrooms worldwide continues to rise, research suggests that teachers of English as an additional language (EAL) feel insufficiently prepared to work in linguistically diverse classrooms (Valentine, 2006; Webster & Valeo, 2011). Consequently, there have been calls for more focus on diversity and multilingualism in teacher education and continuing professional development (CPD). In the Norwegian context, the government has resolved to strengthen its efforts to improve the quality of teacher education including CPD that led to key mandates for CPD in Norway and the recent changes in the national curricula that focus on the benefits of diversity and multilingualism (Norwegian Directorate of Education and Training, 2020). In this study, we discuss how to design and deliver a decentralized CPD project as a response to the call for more multilingual approaches internationally and the Norwegian government's efforts locally. The study employed the framework of dominant language constellation (DLC) as an educational practice (Aronin, 2016; Aronin & Vetter, 2021) with the aim to investigate the influence of the DLC-focused CPD activities on EAL teachers' beliefs about multilingualism, multilingual practices, and their multilingual identity enactments. Data from three EAL teachers at a public primary school in Norway were collected through an initial teacher interview, two DLC-topicalized TPD workshops, 11 DLC lessons co-conducted by the researchers and the teachers, and a follow-up teacher interview after the DLC lessons. Content analysis (Stemler, 2001) identified three themes regarding the influence of the DLC-focused activities: 1) Reshaping teacher beliefs and boosting language awareness, 2)Enhancing teaching competence and enriching multilingual practices, and 3) Enacting and affirming multilingual identity. By illustrating the improvement of teachers' language awareness, the employment of multilingual teaching practices, and the enactment of teachers' and students' multilingual identity, we argue that DLC is a tangible CPD model that can provide concrete structures for teacher educators and teachers to better negotiate the multilingual turn in education.
References
Aronin, L. (2016). Multi-competence and dominant language constellation. In V. Cook & L. Wei (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic multi-competence (pp. 142–163). Cambridge University Press. 
Aronin, L., & Vetter, E. (2021). Dominant Language Constellations approach in education and language acquisition. Springer International Publishing AG.
Norwegian Directorate of Education and Training (2020). English subject curriculum (ENG01-04). Retrieved from https://www.udir.no/lk20/ENG01-04
Stemler, S. (2001). An overview of content analysis. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(17), 1-6.
Valentine, S. (2006). Addressing diversity in teacher education programs. Education, 127(2),196-202.

Webster, N. L. & Valeo, A. (2011). Teacher preparedness for a changing demographic of language learners. TESL Canada Journal, 28(2),105-128.