Uncategorized

In 2018 some channels of informal communication from the Lithuanian Ministry of Education, Science and Sports suggested that plurilingualism will never be a priority in Lithuanian general education. Thus, it came as no surprise to the Lithuanian Listiac team to see how little linguistically sensitive teaching has been known, considered or discussed by any of the parties in education, from teachers to policy makers, let alone attempted to be implemented in practice. In contrast, the reality of the past few years has proved the growing need of LST in facing the emerging changes in linguistic diversity in the Lithuanian schools.

Listiac Blog Relay Race #1: Åbo Akademi University Read more about the Blog Relay Race Åbo Akademi University takes pride in its values diversity, openness, courage, participation and sustainability. The university’s profile focusing on minority research has its core in the Swedish-speaking minority on the national level, but it also builds on a broad understanding …

Towards linguistically sensitive teacher education: one student reflection at a time Read More »

Languages are much more than communication tools, they are strong markers of social identity. Linguistically sensitive teachers understand the complexity of the relationship between language, culture and identity and also know how to challenge the way learners perceive certain languages. Schools tend to privilege dominant languages Two types of values are associated with languages: the …

Common misconception #4: Some languages are better than others Read More »

The local Listiac team at Åbo Akademi University in the city of Vaasa, Finland, aims to incorporate linguistically sensitive teaching in the university’s course descriptions and, as a long-term goal, in the teacher education curricula. The need to do so has not only been addressed by the local project team, but also by the student teachers themselves.   At the end of 2019, a group of student teachers …

Growing interest in LST among student teachers Read More »

The concept of using more languages in class reflects the experience of multilingual children, who use the practice of alternating between two or more languages in a very sophisticated way. This act is called translanguaging and it is an important part of learners’ plurilingual competence. Yet, some fear that this practice could cause confusion and …

Common misconception #3: Using two or more languages in class is confusing for learners Read More »

After ten months of planning, piloting and training, the Listiac fieldwork officially started in January 2020. Little did we know then that the data collection was about to become much more complicated than expected. Although the schools have been closed in all of the partnership countries and parts of the partnership have been in lockdown …

Doing Policy Experimentation During a Global Crisis Read More »

Algarve, the southernmost region of continental Portugal, has a population which derives from the successive population mobilities that have taken place throughout history. Nowadays, the linguistic landscape is a mix of languages, cultures, and identities.  Since the end of the 1960s, especially since the emergence of tourism, people from all over northern Europe, initially, have …

Meet the Portuguese Listiac partner Read More »

Good teaching – one that provides learners with ultimate learning experience – is naturally appreciated by all students. Nevertheless, non-native learners may have very different linguistic and cultural characteristics and needs, which “plain” good teaching fails to accommodate. This is why we need linguistically sensitive teachers. Not all learners learn the language of schooling in …

Common misconception #1: Good teaching for native speakers is good teaching for non-native learners Read More »

It is 10 a.m. on a Monday morning and we are headed to the school, feeling nervous. We don’t know what we are going to find. A school is not easily analysed. The languages, the interaction… We have the instruments prepared, but who knows what we are facing today. We are on the bus, talking …

A Day in the Life of a Listiac Fieldworker Read More »