Visualising multilingualism through language portraits

Hot off the (digital) press! A peer-reviewed scientific article on multilingualism in the diverse language classroom, based on an MA project of our MA Multilingualism alumnus Camila Tabaro Soares. Camila did an internship at the Multilingualism and Literacy research cohort of  NHLStenden. She wrote her thesis in one of their projects, which has now turned into a peer-reviewed and published article:

‘Red is the colour of the heart’: making young children’s multilingualism visible through language portraits.

In the article, written together with  Joana Duarte and Mirjam Günther – Van der Meij, the authors present an analysis of language portraits as a tool to make students’ multilingualism visible by using colours to represent their multilingual repertoires. It provides an answer to the question of how teachers deal with the coexistence of different languages in the classroom. Collecting 570 language portraits, together with 21 semi-structured interviews, the authors observed that students (age 6 to 13) choose the colors for their portraits based on national flags, associations with life experiences and assocations with feelings. They also structure their languages according to linguistic skills in each language and according to body fuctions. Read the full paper (open access) in the Journal of Language and Education, here!