Multilingual Practices: Tackling Challenges and Creating Opportunities

Offered By: University of Groningen via FutureLearn

Course Description

Overview

In a world of globalisation, people who do not share the same language meet more often every day. Being able to deal with these multilingual practices in an effective way can give you an advantage in your daily life and work.

The challenges and opportunities that we will speak of will be recognisable for learners. The course will also introduce you to real multilingual families who will share their personal experiences with their multilingual situations with you. The issues arising from the individual situations of our families will then be looked at from a scientific perspective.

This course has been ranked as one of the best online courses of all time by online course aggregator class central.

This course is aimed at a wide range of people with an interest in multilingualism such as migrants, linguistics and language students, teachers, language policy makers, professionals who are working in a multilingual environment or parents, who are considering to raise their children multilingually.

It may also be an interesting addition for learners who participated in University of Southampton’s course on Understanding Language.

However, no prior knowledge is required to take part in the course and we welcome anyone who is curious to know more about multilingual practices.

Syllabus

Urban multilingualism and language policies

Introduction to the course
Introduction to the week
Language ideologies
Linguistic landscape
Language policies
Conclusion to the week

Multilingual communities

Introduction to the week
Language policy in the family
Multilingualism at home and home language maintenance
Multilingualism in the workplace
Conclusion to the week

Multilingualism in education and cognition

Introduction to the week
Multilingualism and education
The role of English in education
Multilingualism and cognition
Conclusion to the week

Multilingualism and minorities

Introduction to the week
Types of minority languages
New speakers of minority languages
Language contact
Conclusion to the course

Taught by

Nanna H Hilton and Joana Duarte