On 29 and 30 May 2014, this seminar was hosted at Lews Castle College, University of the Highlands and Islands and organised by BAAL member Dr Cassie Smith-Christmas. In total, there were 16 participants from 13 universities across the UK. A total of nine papers were delivered over the two days and an hour-long roundtable was held at the close of the seminar. Keynote speakers were Professor Rosamond Mitchell (University of Southampton) and Professor Wilson McLeod (University of Edinburgh). Professor Kenneth MacKinnon (University of Aberdeen) acted as keynote discussant.
1. Introduction
Recently, immigration issues have gained a prominent role in the UK social and political landscape, with ‘language’ being an important component of discourses on integration. Concurrently, the Census figures for the speakers of Britain's two most widely-spoken autochthonous minority languages, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, have shown a decline in speakers over the 2001–2011 Census period; however, in the case of Scottish Gaelic, for example, the increase in younger speakers of the language suggests that efforts such as Gaelic Medium Education are helping to stem the language's decline. This seminar addressed issues of language learning and its relationship to community use of language, drawing on the three strands of language learning pertinent to the evolving social composition and linguistic diversity in the UK: migrants’ English language learning, migrants’ learning of heritage languages, such as Gujarati and Urdu, and learning of UK autochthonous minority languages, such as Welsh and Scottish Gaelic. The seminar focused on the challenges speakers of all three strands face when transitioning from classroom learning to community use of the language. For autochthonous minority languages, this transition from classroom to community is crucial to the long-term survival of the language, as argued by Spolsky (Reference Spolsky1991) and famously illustrated in Fishman's (1991) Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale. In the case of migrants to the UK, the successful transition from classroom to community in terms of English language is a key component of inclusion into British social, political, and economic life and the transition from classroom to community in terms of migrant heritage languages is key to maintaining cultural integrity within the host community.
2. Objectives
The key objectives of the seminar were:
• To investigate a core concern of language learning and teaching: facilitating community use of the language through classroom learning
• To provide a forum for researchers and practitioners of English as a second language in the UK, community languages such as Cantonese and Urdu, and UK autochthonous minority languages such as Welsh and Scottish Gaelic to discuss the challenge of turning classroom learning into community language use
• To increase the potential impact of academic work by providing a forum for dialogue between academics, practitioners, and community-led language initiatives
3. Thematic papers
The seminar began with Professor Rosamond Mitchell's plenary talk entitled ‘Children's multilingual development in classroom and community: what SLA research can tell us’, which traced the trajectory of second language acquisition (SLA) research from its initial focus on second language (L2) acquisition by (mainly) previously-monolingual speakers to considering more complex multilingual learning settings and multilingual competencies (cf. Mitchell DalNegro & Ioannidou Reference Mitchell, DalNegro, Ioannidou, Studer and Werlen2012). She discussed debates on idealised notions of ‘target’ language (Makoni & Pennycook Reference Makoni and Pennycook2006) as well as the emergence of ‘crossing’ and ‘translanguaging’ (cf. Blackledge & Creese Reference Blackledge and Creese2010). She further discussed how acquisition processes of minority languages can behave differently from majority language acquisition processes and illustrated this premise with detailed examples of recorded conversations from a Gujarati complementary school in the UK and an Irish language school in Ireland. Final discussion centred on the following points:
• What is the significance of codemixing and ‘translanguaging’?
• What are the key indicators of language change and language shift?
• Can multilingualism be ‘stable’ and if so, under what conditions in school and community?
• What are the optimal classroom practices in contexts of language revitalisation?
• What are the implications for SLA theorising?
The next presentation was part of the session entitled ‘English language learning in the UK.’ This presentation, entitled ‘Developing individualised technology-enhanced language learning for low-literate ESOL learners’, was delivered by Rola Naeb (Northumbria University), Martha Young-Scholten (Newcastle University), and Enas Filimban, a Ph.D. student at Newcastle University. Their presentation detailed their involvement in the 2013–2016 Grundtvig-funded Lifelong Learning Multilateral Project and centred on a potential hurdle in immigrant language-learning: low literacy levels. The presentation demonstrated how software designed by the project uses basic grapheme-phoneme correspondences in order to teach low-literacy immigrants to read in Dutch, English, German or Finnish. They also discussed the advantages of learner autonomy in transitioning from classroom to community. More about their project can be found at: http://www.leslla.org/.
The second paper in the panel ‘English Language Learning in the UK’ was entitled ‘Community Collaborative research: How is English learned in the classroom used in the wider community?’ and was delivered by Katharine Swinney, a Ph.D. student at Sheffield University. Katharine's presentation focused on what she terms the ‘super-diverse’ community of Burngreave in Sheffield. Specifically, Katherine discussed a language-learning survey carried out with international immigrants to the area, implemented in response to funding cuts to ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) provision in the area. Katharine's previous employment as a provision coordinator and ESOL practitioner gave her valuable insights into the ‘on the ground’ tasks involved in successfully transitioning from classroom learning to community practice.
The first paper in the session ‘Welsh Language Learning in the UK’ was entitled ‘Welsh abandonment beyond the classroom: Exploring male adolescents’ attitudes and behaviour towards Welsh’ was delivered by Abigail Ruth Price, a Ph.D. student at Bangor University. The presentation focused on the issue of secondary school pupils, especially males, using English as their primary language of interaction outside of the Welsh language classroom. Her research explored how Welsh was not associated with an informal communicative function and therefore English provided a ‘break’ from the school day. She concluded by considering the need for more grassroots media and arts initiatives to make Welsh more attractive to adolescents.
The final paper in the panel ‘Welsh Language Learning in the UK’ was entitled ‘Teaching Welsh to immigrants: new pathways to citizenship in Wales’ and was presented by Gwennan Higham, a Ph.D. student at Cardiff University. Gwennan's presentation discussed Welsh multiculturalism and the challenges immigrants face when learning a minority language such as Welsh. Gwennan found that one of the main motivations for immigrants learning Welsh is that their children are receiving their schooling in Welsh. Gwennan also discussed the role that ESOL tutors’ own attitudes to Welsh played in terms of immigrants’ Welsh access and acquisition. Despite the challenge of limited opportunities to use Welsh outside the classroom, the presentation suggested that because many of the immigrants engaged in multilingual practices already, they were better equipped for language learning processes than monolinguals.
The final session of the first day was ‘Gaelic Language Learning in the UK.’ The session began with a paper entitled ‘GME (Gaelic Medium Education) as a language intervention strategy – an analysis of the Highland Council area’ presented by Ingeborg Birnie, a Soillse Ph.D. student at the University of Aberdeen.Footnote 1 Inge's presentation took a mathematical modelling approach to language revitalisation and discussed how the model developed by Kandler, Unger & Steele (Reference Kandler, Unger and Steele2010) could be used to determine how many new Gaelic speakers would be needed in the Highland Council area, one of the main areas of Gaelic speakers in Scotland, in order to sustain a bilingual population. Ingeborg discussed the implications of Gaelic revitalisation using childhood education as a main revitalisation strategy and discussed the number generated by her mathematical model in this context.
The second paper in the panel was entitled ‘The Playground as a Bridge: Activists building consensus on the language policy and ethos of a new Gaelic immersion school’, presented by Timothy Currie Armstrong, a Soillse Research Fellow at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. Timothy took a social history approach to discussing the struggle that parents had in establishing the stand-alone Gaelic school in Edinburgh. His paper highlighted the role that discourses of ‘separatism’ and anti-Gaelic views played in activists’ difficulties in establishing the school, showing for example how opponents to the Gaelic school thought it was comical that a janitor in a Gaelic-speaking school would be expected to speak Gaelic. Timothy's paper dealt with the question of language policy hierarchies, using the playground as an example of the ideological struggle that takes place when conceptualising and implementing language policies.
The final paper of the day and of the session was entitled ‘Engagement with Glasgow Gaelic community as a means of Gaelic Language Learning’ and was presented by Nicola Carty, a Soillse Ph.D. student at the University of Glasgow. Nicola's presentation looked at adult Gaelic learners’ orientations toward ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ varieties of Gaelic and their desire (or lack of desire) to be part of the ‘traditional’ Gaelic community. She further discussed the emergence of an urban Glasgow Gaelic culture and the relationship between participants’ perception of belonging to this urban Gaelic culture and their degree of Gaelic fluency.
The second day of the seminar began with the second plenary talk entitled ‘Gaelic in Scotland: adult language learning and Gaelic language communities’, presented by Professor Wilson McLeod (University of Edinburgh). Wilson's presentation was centred on new research he conducted with BAAL members Dr Bernadette O'Rourke (Heriott-Watt University) and Stuart Dunmore (University of Edinburgh) on adult learners of Gaelic in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Wilson's presentation highlighted the different trajectories that Gaelic language learners may take and discussed the differences in conceptualising learners ideologically as opposed to linguistically. His talk emphasised how, for urban Gaelic learners, there are sometimes limited opportunities to learn Gaelic in the context of ‘native’ speaker communities and that, for example, there is no tradition of learners boarding with the native speakers in Gaelic heartland areas. Further, even when the opportunities to interact with native speakers do arise, sometimes native speakers choose to use English with the Gaelic learners, which is an obstacle for them in ‘bridging the gap’ between classroom and community.
4. Discussions
The final plenary speaker was Professor Kenneth MacKinnon (University of Aberdeen). Kenneth led the group roundtable discussion and began by summarising the main emergent points of the seminar. He then turned to each participant to give a synopsis of what they thought were the ‘take home’ messages of their presentations. This then generated further discussion, the main themes of which were:
• The challenges of overcoming the negative impacts of some mainstream cultural discourses (e.g. negative attitudes towards immigrants, anti-Gaelic discourses) in terms of language learning and use
• Differences between minority languages that have high levels of institutional and/or national support and those that do not
• The relationship between language and identity; the relationship between language and integration
