Would you like to help one of our fellow OWRI projects with their research on multilingualism and language learning at university?
A team of researchers at SOAS, University of London, led by Professor Anne Pauwels, is investigating the intersection between multilingualism, language learning and higher education: https://www.soas.ac.uk/world-languages-institute/projects/mll/. The increasing voluntary and forced mobility of people resulting from globalisation and political instabilities in various regions are having a dramatic impact on the linguistic make up of many nation-states, especially in Europe. New forms of linguistic diversity and multilingualism are emerging, involving different linguistic practices. These developments may result in changing attitudes towards multilingualism and in different views about the learning of other languages (e.g., which and how?). To date these issues received limited attention in the context of higher education. This project explores the kind of linguistic knowledge that students have, their use of languages, the languages they want to learn and their attitudes towards multilingualism mainly via an online survey and interviews. Although the main focus is on the British context, the researchers are working with international colleagues to obtain comparative data from other anglophone as well as non-anglophone countries.
This project forms part of a large–scale multidisciplinary research initiative ‘Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community’, based at the University of Manchester, which aims to develop new modern languages research paradigms capable of re-conceptualising the relationship between language and community for the benefit of a more open world(http://projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/cross-language-dynamics/).
Take part in the survey
Participation in the survey will help the research team to understand how the language background of students may impact on the study of a language and help improve language learning at universities.
To access the survey, which is available in several languages, please go to https://www.soas.ac.uk/world-languages-institute/projects/mll/
