Community Languages  

>What are community languages?

>Developing community languages and complementary schooling

>Using community languages in the mainstream classroom

Student teachers will benefit from an understanding of community language learning and teaching in Britain. Community languages can be considered as all languages in use other than the 'official' or dominant language of the state. Some of these languages have been used in Britain for hundreds of years, others are more recent.. Community language learning has for many years been supported by Supplementary or Complementary schools. These are voluntary schools, organised by minority ethnic and linguistic groups to serve specific linguistic and/or religious and cultural groups, particularly through community language classes. 

More recently teachers and schools have been encouraged to use and teach community languages within mainstream schools, and to develop better links with complementary schools.  There appears to be two reasons for this: firstly a recognition of the intrinsic value of language learning and maintenance and secondly a greater acceptance that first language development is supportive of second language development. This section includes a range of references, mostly UK based, but also with links to community language research in Europe, North America, New Zealand and Australia.

Section Editor

Angela Creese

Key Readings

Every Teacher has a story to tell

A pilot research study of teachers in supplementary and mother tongue school by Raymonde Sneddon (June 2003)

http://www.le.ac.uk/education/research/complementary_schools

Complementary schools and their communities in Leicester (Peter Martin, Angela Creese and Arvind Bhatt) This presents the final report of an ESRC funded study on the provision of complementary education and the role played by the schools in their community

Six year olds recognise different scripts and understand how they work

Summary of a research study at London University's Institute of Education

Learning to read in three languages at the age of 5

Summary of a six-year research study from the University College Northampton of mainly Pahari and Urdu speaking children of Pakistani heritage.

Children see language as a feature of their identity

A summary of University of Southampton research study of children learning community languages

Bosnian parents in Britain

Summary of a research study at the Institute of Education of Bosnian parents' struggle to maintain their children's bilingualism

Websites

http://www.cilt.org.uk/

CILT, the national centre for languages is the Government's recognised centre of expertise on languages. The organisation's mission is to promote a greater capability in languages amongst all sectors of the UK population. It has an extended and developing section on community languages and covers areas such as: examination information, a twice yearly community languages bulletin, case studies, a register of specialists, useful addreeses and web resources, professional development information and how to qualify as a teacher. It also runs an email disucssion forum.

http://www.becta.org.uk/

Becta is the Government's key partner in the strategic development and delivery of its information and communications technology (ICT) and e-learning strategy for the schools and the learning and skills sectors. The site includes information on community languages under the following sub-headings: resources, sites, software and case studies.

http://www.multiverse.ac.uk/index.aspx -

This site has articles and resources on multilingualism and community languages.

http://www.natecla.org.uk/content/478/community_languages/

The community languages group looks after the particular needs of community language teacher and learners, particularly basic education in community languages. 

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Database/ealindex.html

Founded in 1993, the National Literacy Trust is an independent charity dedicated to building a literate nation. It has a section on community languages.

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/languages/DSP_comlanguage.cfm

The National Language Strategy: This contains information on community languages within strategy. Information can also be found on the strategy at:

http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/teachingandlearning/subjects/languages/ and

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/languages/nationallanguages.cfm

http://www.mailbase.org.uk/lists/community-languages/

The community-languages forum is an e-mail discussion group for all those involved in the teaching of community languages. The aim of the forum is to: provide information; support professional development at all levels; and facilitate networking between colleagues. 

http://www.asiasource.org/reference/language.cfm

This provides a list of Asian language resources and includes: general resources; lessons; pronunciation guides; online dictionaries; related software and fonts. 

http://www.edu.bham.ac.uk/bilingualism/database/ctllmn.htm

This database is intended for use by those interested or involved in the field of Bilingualism regardless of whether they are professionals, researchers, students or parents of bilingual children. It is updated and managed by Deirdre Martin (d.m.martin@bham.ac.uk)

http://www.le.ac.uk/education/research/complementary_schools/

This provides information about complementary school research in Leicester.

http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~cmmr/Policy.html
Centre for Multilingual, Multicultural Research
This contains a wide collection of sites and full text articles concerning language policy and language rights. Includes US policy documents, articles and reports concerning language policy and linguistic rights around the world, and numerous articles and papers on the debate over 'English Only' in the USA.

http://www.cal.org/

CAL (Center for Applied Linguistics) is a private, non-profit organization: a group of scholars and educators who use the findings of linguistics and related sciences in identifying and addressing language-related problems. CAL carries out a wide range of activities including research, teacher education, analysis and dissemination of information, design and development of instructional materials, technical assistance, conference planning, program evaluation, and policy analysis. Within this website there is information on heritage languages. http://www.cal.org/heritage/role.html

http://www.nceltr.mq.edu.au/resources/bilingualism.html

http://www.nceltr.mq.edu.au/strategicplan/index.html

NCELTR (National Centre for English Language Teaching & Research). An Australian resource which provides leadership to the English language teaching community and to promote excellence in English language education through innovative and high quality programs, services, products and research. It provides information on community language teaching and bilingualism.

http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/schoolfind/types/communityschools.php

This site gives information on Saturday School of Community Languages which is an Australian initiative. The Saturday School of Community Languages gives students the opportunity to study the language they speak at home, if a course in that language is not offered at their own school or college.

http://www.tki.org.nz/e/community/language/

This site is managed by the ministry of education in New Zealand.

http://www.clilcompendium.com/

CLIL refers to ay dual-focused educational context in which an additional language, thus not usually the first language of the learners involved, is used as a medium in the teaching and learning of non-language content. The CLIL Compendium received support from the European Commission.

http://www.ogmios.org/home.htm

This is a website on endangered languages and aims to raise awareness of endangered languages, both inside and outside the communities where they are spoken.

 http://www.unesco.org/most/ln2lin.htm

The analysis of multicultural societies is one of the major research topics of UNESCO's MOST Programme. Through interdisciplinary, comparative, and culturally sensitive research, the MOST Programme aims at furnishing information useful for the peaceful and democratic management of societies characterized by cultural and ethnic pluralism.

http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/doc/official/keydoc/actlang/act_lang_en.pdf

A document from the European Commission which outlines its plans for language learning and linguistic diversity from 2004 - 2006

Further reading and references

Alladina, S. and Edwards, V. (1991) Multilingualism in the British Isles (Volumes 1 & 2). Longman : London.

Arthur, J. (2003) 'Baro Afkaaga Hooyo!' A case study of Somali literacy teaching in Liverpool. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 6 (3/4) pp. 253-264.

Bhatt, A. Bhojani, N., Creese, A. and Martin, P. (2004) Occasional Paper 18 - Complementary and mainstream schooling: a case for reciprocity? Watford : NALDIC

Blackledge, A. (2000) Literacy, Power and Social Justice. Stoke-on-Trent: : Trentham Books.

Blackledge, A. (2001) 'The wrong sort of capital? Bangladeshi women and their children's schooling in Birmingham, U.K'. International Journal of Bilingualism 5 (3), pp. 345-369.

Blackledge, A. and Pavlenko, A. (2002) 'Language ideologies in multilingual contexts'. Multilingua 21 (3), pp. 121-139.

Creese, A. (2004) 'Bilingual Teachers in Mainstream Classrooms: Actioning difference and mediating diversity'. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Vol. 7) pp. 189-203

Cummins, J. (2003) 'Bilingual education: Basic principles' in: Dewaele, J-M, Housen, and Li Wei (Eds.) Bilingualism: Beyond Basic Principles.  (pp. 43-55) Clevedon : Multilingual Matters.

DfES (2003) Aiming High. Raising Attainment for Minority Ethnic Pupils. London : DfES.

Extra, G. and Yagmur K. (2004) Urban Multilingualism in Europe: Immigrant Minority Languages at Home and School. Multilingual Matters : Clevedon.

Gregory, E. and Williams, A. (2001) 'Siblings bridging literacies in multilingual contexts'. Journal of Research in Reading 24 (3), pp. 248-266.

Heller, M. (1999) Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography. London : Longman.

Heller, M. and Martin-Jones, M. (Eds.) (2001) Voices of Authority: Educational and Linguistic Difference. Westport, CT : Ablex Publishing.

I.O.E. (Institute of Education) (1999) Turkish Cypriot Children in London Schools: A report for the Turkish Cypriot Forum by the International Centre for Intercultural Studies and the Culture, Communication and Societies Group.  London : I.O.E.

Kenner, C. (2000) 'Biliteracy in a monolingual school system? English and Gujarati in South London' in Language, Culture and Curriculum 13 (1), pp. 13-30

Khan, N.A. and Kabir, M.A. (1999) 'Mother-tongue education among Bangladeshi children in Swansea: an exploration'. Language Learning Journal 20, pp. 20-26.

Leung, C. Harris, R. and Rampton, B. (1997) 'The idealized native speaker, reified ethnicities and classroom realities'. TESOL Quarterly. 31 (3) pp. 543 - 56

Li Wei (1993) 'Mother tongue maintenance in a Chinese community school in Newcastle upon Tyne: Developing a social network perspective'. Language and Education 7 (3) pp. 199-215.

Li Wei (1994) Three Generations, Two Languages, One Family. Language Choice and Language Shift in a Chinese Community in Britain. Clevedon : Multilingual Matters.

Linguistic Minorities Project (1985) The Other Languages of England. London : Routledge.

Martin, P.W. (forthcoming) Borrowing spaces to sustain linguistic diversity in multilingual Britain: learning Gujarati in a complementary school in Leicester, UK.

Martin, P.W., Creese, A., Bhatt, A.,&  Bhojani, N. (2004) A Final Report on Complementary Schools and their Communities in Leicester. University of Leicester/University of Birmingham : Economic and Social Research Council

May, S. (2001) Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, nationalism and the politics of language. London : Longman.

Rampton, B. (1995) Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents. London : Longman.

Robertson, L. (2002) 'Parallel literacy classes and hidden strengths: learning to read in English, Urdu and classical Arabic'. Reading, literacy and language (UKRA) November, 36/3. pp.119-126

Stroud, C. (2003) 'Postmodernist perspectives on local languages: African mother-tongue education in times of globalisation'. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 6 (1), pp. 17-35.