Monolingualism – Page 5 – Language on the Move

Is there such a thing as postmodern bilingual education?

I’m not a big fan of what I call “breathless academic postmodernism,” or what I view as the often naïve valorization of, among other things, hybridization, creolization, liminality, polysemy, multiplicity,…

Christof Demont-HeinrichMarch 3, 2012

Language learning

Bilingualism: Bane or Boon?

Hungarians in RomaniaUp until a few decades ago, the academic consensus – along with public opinion – was that bilingualism is detrimental to the individual and society. Nowadays, that has…

Ingrid PillerFebruary 20, 2012

Language learning Multilingual families

Linguistic extremism

I know some people think what I am doing with my daughters – speaking German to them one-hundred percent of the time even though German is a second language for…

Christof Demont-HeinrichJanuary 30, 2012

Multilingual families

German-English vs. Spanish-English

I have frequently wondered how my experiences speaking German in public with my two daughters, 7, and 5, whom my wife and I are raising as English-German bilinguals in the…

Christof Demont-HeinrichJanuary 21, 2012

Linguistic landscapes

English or Persian?

“What is the meaning of the choice of English in the slogan on this car?” That was one of the questions I asked the participants in the 2nd Language-on-the-Move Workshop…

Ingrid PillerDecember 13, 2011

Language at work

Language costs

USD 254,000: that is the cost of raising two children bilingually in English and German in Denver, Colorado. That’s a lot of money, and inspired me to do some number-crunching…

Ingrid PillerNovember 25, 2011

Multilingual families

Cost of monolingualism: $254,000

American society places little value on meaningful multilingualism for young people, or for adults for that matter. Nowhere is this lack of valuation more apparent than in the U.S. public…

Christof Demont-HeinrichNovember 23, 2011

Language learning

National Languages Curriculum

My daughter attends a public elementary school in NSW where the children are taught French for one hour each week. In 2009, she was away from her school for one…

Ingrid PillerMarch 4, 2011

Language in education

Long-term English language learners

When I first started teaching in Australia, I had a Korean-Australian student in one of my undergraduate classes who sounded like most of the other students in my class, like…

Ingrid PillerFebruary 18, 2011

Language and tourism

English in Iran

Even a casual observer of the linguistic landscape in Iran will have to conclude that Iranians have a collective fetish for English. Almost all public signage is bilingual in English…

Ingrid PillerDecember 30, 2010

Intercultural communication

Divine linguistic diversity

Divine linguistic diversity I’ve spent the past two days convening the first-ever Language-on-the-Move workshop at the University of Tehran. The idea was to explore language contact and multilingualism in the…

Ingrid PillerDecember 23, 2010

Language learning

German is so funny. Not.

Earlier this term I intercepted a note my 7-year-old had written to her teacher: “Ger Ger Ger; Don’t be so rude.” She was objecting to a reading comprehension exercise about…

Ingrid PillerNovember 6, 2010

Research reflections

In memoriam Michael Clyne

Michael Clyne with Emi Otsuji, the 2009 winner of the Michael Clyne Prize I was saddened this morning to read the Australian Linguistics Society’s news about Michael Clyne’s passing! Australian…

Ingrid PillerOctober 30, 2010

Multilingual histories

Providing bilingual education since 1689

Commemorative stamp, German Federal Post, 1989: 300 years French School Berlin I’ve been teaching about bilingualism for more than a decade and when I speak about bilingual education and dual-immersion…

Ingrid PillerOctober 26, 2010

Intercultural communication

What did Angela Merkel really say?

If you read English-language news, you could be forgiven for thinking that Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel recently came out strongly against multiculturalism and immigration. You could be forgiven, but you'd…

Ingrid PillerOctober 20, 2010

Linguistic landscapes

Tokyo: Elegantly Multilingual

Space challenged Shinjuku, Tokyo (September 2010): Photo by Kimie Takahashi Tokyo is getting more and more linguistically diverse every time I go back there. During this trip, I was really…