The Importance of a Plurilingual Approach in English-Speaking Higher Education

Описание: This video features a session of the QUESCREN Education and Vitality Forum 2021. See below for descriptions and panelists.
--

Welcome remarks by Lorraine O’Donnell and William Floch

Moderator:
Brian Lewis, Concordia University

Speaker:
Angelica Galante, McGill University

This keynote presentation introduces concepts and research related to the field of plurilingualism. Speakers of two or more languages develop a repertoire, and I have found through my research that, when drawing on their repertoires, speakers do not use their languages entirely separately. Instead, they use the full repertoire flexibly, depending on interlocutors, sociocultural context, and emotional state. In higher education, my research results show that a plurilingual approach in education offers benefits that a monolingual approach may not, since it enhances cognition, criticality, and empathy, among other factors. These research results are significant, as they show the importance of the repertoire among plurilingual speakers and of a plurilingual approach for academic learning. The findings discussed in this presentation are based on two mixed methods studies that I conducted in English- speaking universities: the first study collected data from 250 students in a university in Montréal to examine the relationship between language and identity, and language use. The second study gathered data from 129 students in a university in Toronto and examined students’ perceptions of monolingual and plurilingual approaches to teaching and learning.

--
The QUESCREN Education and Vitality Forum took place and was recorded by QUESCREN on Nov. 3-5, 2021, at Concordia University in Montreal, QC. In its second iteration, the forum brought together researchers, practitioners, community stakeholders and policymakers to share and discuss best practices and initiatives that support Quebec’s English-speaking diverse communities in light of the new issues presented and pre-existing vitality challenges that emerged during the first year of the COVID pandemic.

For more information, see:
Program:
https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/...
Report: https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/...

QUESCREN provides opportunities to promote the understanding and vitality of English-speaking Quebec through research, knowledge mobilization, networking, and outreach. English-speaking Quebec is an Official Language Minority Community of Canada. For more information, visit our website: QUESCREN.ca.

The event was made possible through the financial support of the Government of Quebec, the Government of Canada, Concordia University, the Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities, Via Rail Canada, Bishop's University, and the Quebec Community Groups Network.

Terms of use 
This video is made available to the public under the terms of Creative Commons Licence Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. The material can be copied and distributed in its original form only and for non-commercial purposes. Users must give appropriate credit to the creator(s) of the material and link to the original source.