Module 1 Reflection on Language

By EVA ROJO TORRES 12/03/2016 

Eva Rojo, a language teacher , shares with you this wonderful reflection on language diversity put into practice with her secondary students.

 Thinking about Language Diversity

Speaking activity as a brainstorming with a group of 24 students of 4th year of ESO using the PowerPoint slides provided. Their answers surprise me as they basically told me they were monolingual, taking into account that they have English and Frech/German as languages learnt at school.  One student shared that, at home, she spoke Portuguese with her mother. Another added that she did speak a mixture of Spanish and English at her village quite close to Portugal, but only in the summer. And one more is half Japanese.  

As a whole they thought there were only hundreds of languages spoken in the world. And I did have to explain that there are languages in danger and others dying. They were surprised by the results.

The same questions made me think about languages and how strong or fragile their life could be.  Spanish is in such good position, for one reason is the second non official language spoken in USA

 Language Diversity 

From my point of view Language Diversity is to appreciate and value all languages spoken in the classroom.  My students who speak Portuguese and Japanese did not appreciate the fact that they are able to communicate in several languages.  I make them reflect on the value of their heritage language.

And this is what we, teachers, should do and I did not do.  I realized that when we did the activity and I shared the languages I speak with my students and make them talk about the languages they spoke and the level of fluency. In very simple terms like very well, good, so-so, a little they shared with each other and they added the value to the languages.  I am thinking about making these students teach us some simple words in one teaching session so they can become proud of their competence in these languages.

 Use Cultural Activities

So why not do it? Next week is the end of term and after exams they are quite tired so I am going to do a teaching session about Learning Languages.

Languages Classification

My students and myself enjoyed the language tree, we searched for one for Japanese on the net. I have attached the picture.