Ingrid Piller

Language and migration

Language or religion: which is the greater fault line in diverse societies?

Churchill Square Shopping Mall, Brighton, UK (Source: Wikipedia) In a shopping mall in the city of Brighton, UK, a tourist was arrested on terrorism charges last week for taking a…

Ingrid PillerJuly 8, 2015

Language in education

Educational success through bilingual education

Children in a bilingual program in Hamburg (Source: AlsterKind) It is a key finding of contemporary educational research that the children of migrants experience educational disadvantage vis-à-vis their native-born peers.…

Ingrid PillerJune 17, 2015

Language in education

Are the children of intermarried couples smarter?

Preschool in Karlsruhe, Germany (Source: DW) Ever since my research for my 2002 book Bilingual Couples Talk I’ve regularly been told by people – or been asked to confirm their…

Ingrid PillerMay 20, 2015

Language in education

“Naughty boys” trying to learn

"Naughty boys" in the media: image from the Channel 4 gangs and drugs drama "Top Boy" Teacher expectations can constitute a self-fulfilling prophecy: teachers behave differently towards children depending on…

Ingrid PillerMay 13, 2015

Language and migration

Bilingualism is good for you! … if you are a girl …

Bilingualism has a gender A while ago, I reported on the findings of a US study that demonstrated that children of immigrants who achieve high-level bilingual proficiency in both English…

Ingrid PillerMay 6, 2015

Language in education

Children of the harvest: schooling, class and race

Children of migrant cotton field workers from Oklahoma (Source: Library of Congress) I’ve just come across a fascinating article about the schooling of migrant children during the Great Depression era…

Ingrid PillerApril 8, 2015

Language in education

Access denied

Nanai/Hezhe children (Source: Wikipedia) We have often examined here on Language on the Move how ‘English for all’ educational policies entrench inequality rather than alleviate disadvantage (e.g., here or here).…

Ingrid PillerMarch 25, 2015

Language in education

Paying lip-service to diversity

Diversity in early childhood education: valued or silenced? (Source: easternct.edu) Bilingual education presents a major conundrum in contemporary diverse societies: on the one hand, bilingualism and diversity more generally are…

Ingrid PillerMarch 18, 2015

Language in education

Dodgy data and language misdiagnosis

2014 NAPLAN Year 3 Numeracy test results by language status In Australia the results of last year’s round of student and school performance on national standardized testing have just been…

Ingrid PillerMarch 11, 2015

Language and migration

Is language learning on the job the best way to learn a new language?

Meat workers, Fletcher Abattoir (Source: SheepCRC) One of the most famous research subjects to ever have participated in second language learning research is a man known in the literature as…

Ingrid PillerMarch 4, 2015

Language politics

What’s in a name?

Annastacia Palaszczuk and members of her family (Source: Couriermail) Would Kirk Douglas be a Hollywood legend if he had kept his birth name Issur Danielovitch? Would Bob Dylan have achieved…

Ingrid PillerFebruary 4, 2015

Language politics

#yallaCSU

This tweet says: "CSU issues correction: its proposal was translated into German incorrectly" Germany is currently witnessing a delightful language ideological farce. It all started when the conservative Christian Social…

Ingrid PillerDecember 9, 2014

Language learning

Partnering for the Future

PASCH Schools: Partners for the future Last week I was privileged to attend the 3rd Conference of School Principals of PASCH Schools in Southeast Asia. A ‘PASCH school’ is a regular…

Ingrid PillerOctober 21, 2014

English as a global language

Language work in the internet café

A locutorio shop front in Barcelona (Source: El Periodico) There is now a well-established body of work exploring the language work provided by service workers in call centres and tourist…

Ingrid PillerSeptember 22, 2014

Language deficit in super-diversity

Linguistic diversity in Sydney (Source: Sydney Morning Herald) The media in Anglophone countries regularly engage in a bit of a bragfest about the linguistic diversity of their cities. In Sydney,…

Ingrid PillerAugust 20, 2014

Language in education

Sink-or-swim for international students

For international students, it's sink or swim (Image source: luvimages.com) It is one of the basic findings of decades of research in bilingual education that language submersion is not a…

Ingrid PillerAugust 6, 2014

Are the children of intermarried couples smarter?

“Naughty boys” trying to learn

Bilingualism is good for you! … if you are a girl …

Access denied

Paying lip-service to diversity

Dodgy data and language misdiagnosis

Is language learning on the job the best way to learn a new language?

Partnering for the Future

Sink-or-swim for international students

UNTERSTÜTZT VON / SUPPORTED BY

NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIPTION