Search results

Traditional didactic approaches to multiple language learning have mainly focused on the differences and similarities between languages. However, in the language learning classroom, the willingness to activate prior language knowledge has been generally overlooked, despite being a fundamental part of the actual process of language learning Accordingly, the author suggests that the traditional contrastive method should be complemented by a psycholinguistic approach with the aim of exploiting the interlinguistic strategies used in language teaching and learning. An alternative methodological approach that looks at the whole linguistic repertoire of students is needed in order to exploit the benefits of multilingual education, going beyond linguistic similarities and differences. Following a detailed analysis of the relevant literature in the field, which identifies metalinguistic awareness as the most important factor enhancing bilinguals’ outcomes in additional language learning, the present chapter deals with its implications for a multilingual didactic approach. In particular, students must be stimulated and assisted in the process of conscious reflection and manipulation of language, learning strategies, and linguistic skills developed in previous linguistic systems to observe a positive and significant outcome in third (or additional) language acquisition (TLA). School curricula and teaching practices could benefit from placing the multilingual learners and their entire linguistic repertoire at the center of the learning process, rather than focusing exclusively on the target language.

All humans have an innate ability to learn multiple languages and with ­increasing mobility across linguistic boundaries, people are more than ever embracing multilingualism. This chapter examines international students’ perceptions of their third language (L3) learning experience in their second language (L2) English context. Challenges and strategies of L3 learning are explored as data from a survey and interviews were analyzed. Twenty-eight (n = 28) international students were asked to answer Likert-scale and ­open-­ended questions regarding their L3 learning experience. Select ­participants were also interviewed. The quantitative and qualitative results show that learning an L3 not only offered international students an opportunity to strengthen their understanding of the relationship between language and culture, but also allowed them to position themselves as multilinguals within the globalized world context. Furthermore, the data reveal that technology is an integral part of international students’ L3 learning process, but that additional support is needed. This chapter also discusses ideas including technology-e­nhanced language learning to assist international students in their L3 learning experience in higher education.

In this chapter, we share narratives from our personal experiences with a shared focus on the relationships between personal identities and family language. The acquisition of a family language is said to be accompanied by a specific ‘intercultural burden’ (Kagan 2012), which is manifested at the intersection of different influences and psychological tensions. This psychosocial and cultural reality has the potential for the development of a true intercultural identity that brings together contradictions and conflicts of inherited cultural differences. Here, through a prism of three personal narratives, we create a series of questions and reflections in relation to the family language. The three voices are articulated through three auto-ethnographic accounts of individuals – two linguists and a theatre scholar who are both personally and professionally invested in the topic of post-migration. The common thread of the three narratives is the experience of Serbian as the first language. As an aspect of personal identity, the idealised concept of family language affects one's identity and makes a decisive impact on investment and potentially life-defining decisions.

In this study, micro-foundations of strategy as the theoretical framework to study the effect of managers’ individual characteristics on multinational team performance are adopted. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to study managers’ multilingual communication abilities and multicultural background, and their role in, respectively, effectively reconfiguring team human assets and sensing cognitively distant opportunities and threats.

This study uses national football teams competing in national and international competitions and their coaches’ characteristics as the data set to test the theory. Using random coefficient modeling and ordinary least square regression, this paper analyzes two samples of 222 and 79 teams and found that both these characteristics contribute to team performance; however, their effects differ depending on the team environment.

Multicultural managers contribute positively to team performance only when the team is operating in a highly diverse environment, their effect is not statistically significant in homogeneous environments. In less diverse environments, it is the multilingual manager who can improve team performance through more efficient communication and greater effects of leadership on the team.

Managers’ characteristics such as their multicultural background and multilingual capabilities affect team performance. In particular, these effects come into play in highly diverse and international settings. Micro-foundation literature is advised to focus on the internationalization and multicultural backgrounds of managers as a precursor for organizational international performance.

This article reports the outcomes of a study on communication support, commissioned to develop a borough‐wide strategy in 2003 by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.The research stems from a recognition of communication as a key to successful delivery of public services and enhancement of a multicultural community.The focus is on ‘communication’ (rather than ‘language’), since it captures issues beyond the exchange of information through words: interpersonal interactions and relationships, techniques and modes of organising information exchange. Language is a key component within the broad ambit of communication mechanism and skills. Hence interpretation and translation are perceived as models of communications support alongside advocacy, integrated team, multilingual professional team, family/friends and minors, supported language, symbols and signs, and Plain English.While engaging in the debate and highlighting some of the broader issues concerning communication support services, the focus is on the following main issues:• policy frameworks and guiding principles in communication support• methods and techniques for needs assessment, monitoring and evaluation of communication support• communication support provision in Tower Hamlets including quantifying need, actual state of provision and users' perceptions.Probably among the first of its kind, the strategy draws on existing knowledge and good practice to develop a common framework for public services in Tower Hamlets. It is believed that it will serve a pioneering role in co‐ordinated existing and developing coherent approaches to communication support.

This chapter describes a case study of a multidisciplinary approach to the complex social issue of teaching English to multilingual tertiary students in a pluralistic context. It does this by advancing an innovative multilingual pedagogy combining specific aspects of Commedia dell’Arte (Di Niro) and translanguaging (Viljoen) to cross boundaries between languages and cultures for effectively teaching. This is achieved through an examination of Di Niro’s course structure, written reflections and observations of teaching students “English for Business Studies” at the University of South Australia (UniSA). Reflections are arranged and interpreted around three themes: multilingualism, game play, and physicality/embodied learning. Following O’Neill and Viljoen (2021, p. 1), the authors argue that “such reflection is not simply contemplative, but involves dynamic, transforming and reflexive processes of accessing” the lived-experience of language and culture of the teacher and students in an engaged and responsive learning dialogue. Commedia dell’Arte includes multilingualism, improvisation, gesture, role-play and extending students to develop socio-political dialogue. Translanguaging involves foregrounding and affirming the home language of multilingual students of English while also developing their English. Blending these methodologies and methods enables the authors to simultaneously address practical and theoretical aspects of teaching in a multilingual classroom.

This chapter proposes selected cultural values and worldviews of cosmopolitan individual cultural identity as an ideal and model for international and transnational higher education, in teaching and learning, benefitting individuals and institutions. As a “metacultural position” and interactive engagement with the “Other,” cosmopolitan teaching and learning could impact national and global higher education. Such reflection of timeless educational values and ideals could benefit the development higher education systems in our ever more globalizing world.

Conceptually, cosmopolitan identity is defined via a complex literature matrix of key issues and concerns of world citizenship, substantiated and enriched by considerable critical thinking. Empirically, an investigation of highly multilingual students for revelations of their global identity strengthens and furthers this framework. Overall, interdisciplinary insights from literary, social, media and gender studies complement contributions to higher education's universality and values, so as to suit individual, institutional, and international needs.

Cosmopolitan features and values could harmonize global knowledge systems yet without cultural hegemonies, by building cross-cultural standards via best identity notions and practices. Recognizing equally valuable cultural contributions would also improve institutions' diversity, equity, and inclusion, raising educational quality, motivations, and expectations. Cosmopolitan identity could thus educationally enrich and institutionally empower for global complexity and uncertainty.

Educational stakeholders could shape institutions for cosmopolitan cultural values and increased diversity, with transnational norms and practices grounded in local realities, such as improved linguistic competences, or increased cultural understanding and engagement. Individual internationalization could therefore develop parallel to cultural and educational worldviews, expandable and improvable on an open-ended scale.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how professional service firms (PSFs) manage the linguistic tensions between global Englishization and local multilingualism. It achieves this by analysing the work of Big Four audit firms in Luxembourg, where three official languages co-exist: Luxembourgish, French, and German. In addition, expatriates bring with them their native languages in a corporate environment that uses English as its lingua franca.

The paper combines the institutionalist sociology of the professions with theoretical concepts from sociolinguistics to study the multifaceted role of language in PSFs. Empirically, the paper draws from 25 interviews with current and former audit professionals.

The client orientation of the Big Four segments each firm into language teams based on the client’s language. It is thus the client languages, rather than English as the corporate language, that mediate, define, and structure intra- and inter-organizational relationships. While the firms emphasize the benefits of their linguistic adaptability, the paper reveals tensions along language lines, suggesting that language can be a means of creating cohesion and division within the firms.

This paper connects research on PSFs with that on the role of language in multinational organizations. In light of the Big Four’s increasingly global workforce, it draws attention to the linguistic divisions within the firms that question the existence of a singular corporate culture. While prior literature has centred on firms’ global–local divide, the paper shows that even single branches of such firm networks are not monolithic constructs, as conflicts and clashes unfold amid a series of “local–local” divides.

The purpose of this conceptual literature review is to investigate how language factors have been studied in the expatriate literature, and how cross-fertilisation with the broader language-sensitive international business and management field may facilitate integrated research of language in global work.

This paper is based on a thematic review of expatriate research and international business and management literature. The findings are structured through Reiche et al.'s (2019) three-dimensional conceptualisation of global work, after which two frameworks are developed to conceptualise how language connects the three dimensions – actors, structures and processes.

The literature review demonstrates that language-related topics are yet to gain status in the expatriate tradition, and the majority of studies, which do consider linguistic factors appear largely dissociated from the growing community of language research in the broader international management and international business fields. However, once consolidated, the literature reveals that language is present in all dimensions of global work. A processual view of corporate language management highlights the central role of human resource management (HRM), while a dynamic multi-level perspective indicates that language may form bidirectional relationships between the three dimensions of global work.

Due to the segmentation between language-sensitive research in the expatriate and international business/management traditions, few studies have considered the HRM implications of global mobility and the multifaceted nature of language at work. This conceptual literature review brings both perspectives together for a more contextualised and holistic view of language in international workforces.