Search results for: multilingualism

Authors: Cezarina da Conceição Santinho Maurício, José Duque Vicente

Abstract:

Established in 1987, the Erasmus Programme is a program for the exchange of higher education students. Its purposes are several. The mobility developed has contributed to the promotion of multiple learning, the internalization the feeling of belonging to a community, and the consolidation of cooperation between entities or universities. It also allows the experience of a European experience, considering multilingualism one of the bases of the European project and vehicle to achieve the union in diversity. The program has progressed and introduced changes Erasmus+ currently offers a wide range of opportunities for higher education, vocational education and training, school education, adult education, youth, and sport. These opportunities are open to students and other stakeholders, such as teachers. Portugal was one of the countries that readily adhered to this program, assuming itself as an instrument of internationalization of polytechnic and university higher education. Students and social work teachers have been involved in this mobility of learning and multicultural interactions. The presence and activation of this program was made possible by Portugal's joining the European Union. This event was reflected in the field of portuguese social work and contributes to its approach to the reality of european social work. Historically, the Portuguese social work has built a close connection with the Latin American world and, in particular, with Brazil. There are several examples that can be identified in the different historical stages. This is the case of the post-revolution period of 1974 and the presence of the reconceptualization movement, the struggle for enrollment in the higher education circuit, the process of winning a bachelor's degree, and postgraduate training (the first doctorates of social work were carried out in Brazilian universities). This influence is also found in the scope of the authors and the theoretical references used. This study examines the participation of graduates and students of social work in the Erasmus program. The following specific goals were outlined: to identify the host countries and universities; to investigate the dimension and type of mobility made, understand the learning and experiences acquired, identify the difficulties felt, capture their perspectives on social work and the contribution of this experience in training. In the methodological field, the option fell on a qualitative methodology, with the application of semi-structured interviews to graduates and students of social work with Erasmus mobility experience. Once the graduates agreed, the interviews were recorded and transcribed, analyzed according to the previously defined analysis categories. The findings emphasize the importance of this experience for students and graduates in informal and formal learning. The authors conclude with recommendations to reinforce this mobility, either at the individual level or as a project built for the group or collective.

Keywords: erasmus programme, graduates and students of social work, participation, social work

Procedia PDF Downloads 121

Authors: Fatin Mansour Daas

Abstract:

Language education responds to and is reflective of emerging social and political trends. Language policies and practices are shaped by political, economic, social and cultural considerations. Following this, Israeli language education policy as implemented in Arab schools in Israel is influenced by the particular political and social situation of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel. This national group remained in their homeland following the war in 1948 between Israel and its Arab neighbors and became Israeli citizens following the establishment of the State of Israel. This study examines language policy in Arab schools in Israel from 1948 until the present time in light of the unique experience of the Palestinian Arab homeland minority in Israel with a particular focus on questions of politics and identity. The establishment of the State of Israel triggered far-reaching political, social and educational transformations within Arab Palestinian society in Israel, including in the area of language and language studies. Since 1948, the linguistic repertoire of Palestinian Arabs in Israel has become more complex and diverse, while the place and status of different languages have changed. Following the establishment of the State of Israel, only Hebrew and Arabic were retained as the official languages, and Israeli policy reflected this in schools as well: with the advent of the Jewish state, Hebrew language education among Palestinians in Israel has increased. Similarly, in Arab Palestinian schools in Israel, English is taught as a third language, Hebrew as a second language, and Arabic as a first language – even though it has become less important to native Arabic speakers. This research focuses on language studies and language policy in the Arab school system in Israel from 1948 onwards. It will analyze the relative focus of language education between the different languages, the rationale of various language education policies, and the pedagogic approach used to teach each language and student achievements vis-à-vis language skills. This study seeks to understand the extent to which Arab schools in Israel are multi-lingual by examining successes, challenges and difficulties in acquiring the respective languages. This qualitative study will analyze five different components of language education policy: (1) curriculum, (2) learning materials; (3) assessment; (4) interviews and (5) archives. Firstly, it consists of an analysis examining language education curricula, learning materials and assessments used in Arab schools in Israel from 1948-2018 including a selection of language textbooks for the compulsory years of study and the final matriculation (Bagrut) examinations. The findings will also be based on archival material which traces the evolution of language education policy in Arabic schools in Israel from the years 1948-2018. This archival research, furthermore, will reveal power relations and general decision-making in the field of the Arabic education system in Israel. The research will also include interviews with Ministry of Education staff who provide instructional oversight in the instruction of the three languages in the Arabic education system in Israel. These interviews will shed light on the goals of language education as understood by those who are in charge of implementing policy.

Keywords: language education policy, languages, multilingualism, language education, educational policy, identity, Palestinian-Arabs, Arabs in Israel, educational school system

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Authors: Nada Poropat Jeletic, Gordana Hrzica

Abstract:

Bilingual conversational corpora represent a meaningful and the most comprehensive data source for investigating the genuine contact phenomena in non-monitored bi-lingual speech productions. They can be particularly useful for bilingual research since some features of bilingual interaction can hardly be accessed with more traditional methodologies (e.g., elicitation tasks). The method of language sampling provides the resources for describing language interaction in a bilingual community and/or in bilingual situations (e.g. code-switching, amount of languages used, number of languages used, etc.). To capture these phenomena in genuine communication situations, such sampling should be as close as possible to spontaneous communication. Bilingual spoken corpus design is methodologically demanding. Therefore this paper aims at describing the methodological challenges that apply to the corpus design of the conversational corpus design of the Istrian Istrovenetian-Croatian Bilingual Corpus. Croatian is the first official language of the Croatian-Italian officially bilingual Istria County, while Istrovenetian is a diatopic subvariety of Venetian, a longlasting lingua franca in the Istrian peninsula, the mother tongue of the members of the Italian National Community in Istria and the primary code of informal everyday communication among the Istrian Italophone population. Within the CLARIN infrastructure, TalkBank is being used, as it provides relevant procedures for designing and analyzing bilingual corpora. Furthermore, it allows public availability allows for easy replication of studies and cumulative progress as a research community builds up around the corpus, while the tools developed within the field of corpus linguistics enable easy retrieval and analysis of information. The method of language sampling employed is kept at the level of spontaneous communication, in order to maximise the naturalness of the collected conversational data. All speakers have provided written informed consent in which they agree to be recorded at a random point within the period of one month after signing the consent. Participants are administered a background questionnaire providing information about the socioeconomic status and the exposure and language usage in the participants social networks. Recording data are being transcribed, phonologically adapted within a standard-sized orthographic form, coded and segmented (speech streams are being segmented into communication units based on syntactic criteria) and are being marked following the CHAT transcription system and its associated CLAN suite of programmes within the TalkBank toolkit. The corpus consists of transcribed sound recordings of 36 bilingual speakers, while the target is to publish the whole corpus by the end of 2020, by sampling spontaneous conversations among approximately 100 speakers from all the bilingual areas of Istria for ensuring representativeness (the participants are being recruited across three generations of native bilingual speakers in all the bilingual areas of the peninsula). Conversational corpora are still rare in TalkBank, so the Corpus will contribute to BilingBank as a highly relevant and scientifically reliable resource for an internationally established and active research community. The impact of the research of communities with societal bilingualism will contribute to the growing body of research on bilingualism and multilingualism, especially regarding topics of language dominance, language attrition and loss, interference and code-switching etc.

Keywords: conversational corpora, bilingual corpora, code-switching, language sampling, corpus design methodology

Procedia PDF Downloads 108