monolingual mindset – Page 2 – Language on the Move

Language in education

How to solve Australia’s language learning crisis

Demand action from our politicians to make a LOTE compulsory! The state of language learning in Australian schools is dire. This weekend the Sydney Morning Herald carried an article entitled “Why students are…

Ingrid PillerJune 15, 2016

Multilingual histories

Herder: an explainer for linguists

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) Some contemporary sociolinguists love to hate an 18th century educator, philosopher, theologian, translator and general polymath by the name of Herder. Hardly a week goes by…

Ingrid PillerMarch 4, 2016

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 learning

The language cringe of the native speaker

"How bad is your cultural cringe?" (Source: Jenna Guillaume, BuzzFeed) Keith: I’m still really shit at pronouncing Lisa’s surname. With the umlaut o. Hanna: What is Lisa’s surname? (laughter) Keith:…

Hanna TorshJune 10, 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 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 in Australia

Linguistic diversity and social inclusion in Australia

2012 workshop on 'Linguistic Diversity and Social Inclusion in Australia' at Macquarie University How does language intersect with social inclusion in contemporary Australia? Do social inclusion policies address linguistic diversity?…

Lg_on_the_moveNovember 25, 2014

Language learning

Bilingual students at the crossroads

Livia and her classmates at a crossroads the year before entering (or not) Gymnasium (Switzerland, 2004) Secondary education as a monolingual fork in the road Let me bust a prevalent…

Livia GerberNovember 16, 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

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 learning

How the presence of a bilingual school changes the linguistic profile of a community

German International School Sydney It is one of the great narratives of our time that the market will fix everything. In education this means that parental choice is assumed to…

Ingrid PillerJuly 31, 2014

Linguistic landscapes

Multilingual mismatch

Auburn parking ticket (left: quadrilingual on back; right: city logo on front) In Australia with its persistent monolingual mindset coming across any kind of official institutional multilingual communication always feels…

Ingrid PillerJuly 7, 2014

Intercultural communication

English at the Olympics

Many people would agree that English is the language of globalization. English is almost always adopted as the official language of international events, including the Olympic Games. It does not…