Languages of Sydney: The People and the Passion
by Alice Chik, Susan Markose, and Diane Alperstein [Open Access PDF | ePub & Mobi]
In today’s multicultural classrooms, educators are increasingly entrusted with the education of plurilingual students whose linguistic identities have rarely been foregrounded in classroom interactions. In order to address the ways of knowing and learning of our diverse student population, it is imperative that educators recognise and incorporate the linguistic and cultural heritage of the students in their classes. One way to examine beliefs, values and meanings regarding language learning and linguistic identity is for participants to map language experiences to body silhouettes and to record, through narratives, how their attitudes and perceptions are affected by their own language and cultural background. To this end, this action research project required student-teachers, who were undertaking a unit of study on multiculturalism and education, to reflect on what meanings are constructed, the cultural/linguistic influences on these constructions, and how these constructions guided their thoughts, behaviours and worldviews implicit in their linguistic identities. Hence, this action research project worked with students as reflective practitioners to document their experiences with language – both languages that are part of their heritage and those which they undertook as part of their formal learning requirements. This project includes a toolkit that can be used with learners of any age, cultural, linguistic and educational contexts. The ideas presented in the tool kit can act as an extension of the body silhouettes to further extend student expression of shared language and cultural experiences.
The authors are language / literacy professionals who are themselves migrants to Sydney. They have brought their language and cultural heritages with them to Australia and marvel at the diversity of languages and people who learn, speak and use these languages. They believe that the people and their passion about languages and cultures combine to make Sydney a great metropolis. |
Contents
- Foreword by Terry Lamb
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- Chapter 2: The languages, the people and the passion
- Visual Narratives: 66 visual portraits, written narratives, and research interpretations
- Chapter 3: How children depict their multilingual selves? From a research goal to the Heritage Language classroom…and back! A research memoir by Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer
- Appendix: A blank portrait
- Index of keywords
Publication details
Publication date: 2018
Ebook, Open Access [PDF] [ePub and Mobi for Kindle]
Print book, 166 colour pages, $40.00 [available on Amazon]
ISBN (ebook): 9780463438664
ISBN (print): 9781729401309
All royalties will be donated to The Australian Literacy & Numeracy Foundation (https://alnf.org/). The Foundation focuses on raising literacy levels in Australia’s most marginalised communities, including the refugee and Indigenous communities. We hope you will support us by buying a print copy.
Ebook, Open Access [PDF] [ePub and Mobi for Kindle]
Print book, 166 colour pages, $40.00 [available on Amazon]
ISBN (ebook): 9780463438664
ISBN (print): 9781729401309
All royalties will be donated to The Australian Literacy & Numeracy Foundation (https://alnf.org/). The Foundation focuses on raising literacy levels in Australia’s most marginalised communities, including the refugee and Indigenous communities. We hope you will support us by buying a print copy.
About the authors
Alice Chik is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Studies and co-ordinator of the Macquarie Multilingualism Research Group. Her research interests include language learning in informal and digital contexts, and multilingualism as urban diversities. Since moving to Sydney in 2014, Alice has taken up strolling in various suburbs to explore and understand languages in the community as a serious hobby. She recently co-edited ‘Multilingual Sydney’ with Phil Benson and Robyn Moloney (Routledge, 2018).
For the past fifteen years, Susan Markose has had the pleasure of working as a tutor and occasional lecturer in undergraduate units at the Department of Educational studies, Macquarie University. She has tutored in reading acquisition, educational psychology and intercultural learning. Her published articles report on cross-cultural research findings into family literacy practices and their relation to academic achievement at school. Susan has previously worked as a school teacher at both primary and secondary school levels in Australia and overseas.
Diane Alperstein has lived and worked in different multicultural societies from South Africa to Israel, Canada and finally Sydney, Australia, where she has settled and raised her family. She has taught largely in secondary schools and tertiary institutions, with a special interest in the areas of English as a second language, special education, gifted education, and increasingly, multicultural literacy. She enjoys creative writing which constantly reminds her of how difficult language mastery can be. After thirty-five years of teaching, many spent at Macquarie University, she feels it is the intercultural diversity of the students she meets which breathes new life and relevance into every learning experience she has been part of.
For the past fifteen years, Susan Markose has had the pleasure of working as a tutor and occasional lecturer in undergraduate units at the Department of Educational studies, Macquarie University. She has tutored in reading acquisition, educational psychology and intercultural learning. Her published articles report on cross-cultural research findings into family literacy practices and their relation to academic achievement at school. Susan has previously worked as a school teacher at both primary and secondary school levels in Australia and overseas.
Diane Alperstein has lived and worked in different multicultural societies from South Africa to Israel, Canada and finally Sydney, Australia, where she has settled and raised her family. She has taught largely in secondary schools and tertiary institutions, with a special interest in the areas of English as a second language, special education, gifted education, and increasingly, multicultural literacy. She enjoys creative writing which constantly reminds her of how difficult language mastery can be. After thirty-five years of teaching, many spent at Macquarie University, she feels it is the intercultural diversity of the students she meets which breathes new life and relevance into every learning experience she has been part of.