Talking about your Languages

This document provides guidance for teachers on conducting a language portrait activity with students and utilizing it as a tool to facilitate discussions on languages, language usage, and linguistic repertoires. Additionally, it includes a worksheet designed to prepare students for talking about their languages in English.

Documents attached: 

• Worksheet: Silhouette
• Worksheet: Talking about your languages
• T:Instructions: Silhouette 

Language Detectives

Language Detectives is an exercise that empowers students to become researchers, exploring the linguistic landscape of a place (identifying the languages present in a public space) and investigating the linguistic repertoires of people (determining the languages spoken by individuals in that space). 

This activity reveals the multilingual nature of public spaces and exposes students to different languages, including those they are familiar with, unknown languages, and languages they wouldn’t expect. In essence, it raises awareness about linguistic diversity and might motivate them to think about their own linguistic repertoire and language use within familiar social spaces. 

To sum up, the students can share their findings and experiences with the class, fostering a collaborative and insightful discussion.

Documents attached:

• T-Instruction_Language Detectives 
• T-Instruction_Language Detectives short
• Worksheet_Language Detectives 

Workshop on language awareness and multilingualism

In this workshop, students will work on language awareness and multilingualism. The workshop is designed for an excursion to the University of Vienna; however, it could easily be adapted for a visit to any university or public space. 

For detailed instructions, teachers can refer to the documents provided below. The document T-Instruction_Workshop language awareness and multilingualism contains detailed instructions for the complete workshop, including preparation beforehand, activities at the University, and presentation tasks. The workshop could finish with a presentation task by the students; instructions can be found here: T-Instruction_Workshop presentation tasks.

During the workshop, the students will have to become Language-detectives, a playful way to let them collect data and be researchers!

To prepare students for discussions on diversity, multilingualism, and an engaging day at the university, you can use the materials Talking about your Languages and Was ist eine Uni.

To further stimulate discussions and reflections on languages, complement the presentation task or the preparation with our Powerpoint presentation (PPP_Udele multilingualism), which includes valuable exercises.

Feel free to explore these resources to make the workshop a rich and enlightening experience for everyone involved.

Documents attached: 

• T-Instruction_Workshop language awareness and multilingualism 
• T-Instruction_workshop presentation tasks 

Documents linked:

• Language Detectives
• T-Instruction_Language Detectives 
• T-Instruction_Language Detectives short
• Worksheet_Language Detectives 
• PPP_Multilingualism Udele 
• Talking about your languages 

Linguistic Repertoire: Station Work

We suggest that this station work is carried out after activities in which students have talked about their languages (student languages, languages in the classroom, languages in the area/country, etc.), of after you have done the exercise Talking about your languages. This is also a great work package for repeating vocabulary. We used the materials with 6th grade students (2. Sekundarstufe) and also worked on building questions in the past simple tense. 

Please read the Teacher-instructions for some ideas on how the stations could be used. In our case, we concluded the exercise by collaboratively creating a multilingual poster about what we found out!

Station 1 is made for students who might be new to the class or have special needs and are not part of the regular lessons. (In our case we needed to accommodate a group of newly arrived students). The students can repeat vocabulary mutilingually and draw a portrait of themselves. 

Station 2 is a reading and writing exercise in which students read a model text about linguistic repertoire and language use. They are required to answer questions that prompt them to reflect on their own languages. Here, teachers could also use a brief text on their own linguistic repertoire as a prompt! That would be more interesting for the students. In the second part, students write a text using the present simple tense.

Station 3 is a speaking exercise that begins with a warm-up and a vocabulary review. It then encourages students to construct both scaffolded questions and their own questions that they can ask others, making notes about the response. This exercise reinforces creating questions, using question words and understanding/answering questions.

At the end of all exercises, there is space for a smiley/drawing (or a sticker) and a comment by the teachers. We have found that personal comments on finished worksheets are highly motivational for the students! And how about making the comments multilingual? You could for example, write ‘well done’ in one of the languages of the students! (Use Google Translate)

Documents attached:

• T-Instructions_Linguistic Repertoire Station Work
• Worksheet_Vocab_Station 1
• Worksheet_Writing_Station 2 
• Worksheet_Speaking_Station 3

The Clock

The following activities could accompany and strengthen any ELT textbook unit on teaching the time (e.g. MORE! 1, Unit 11 “What’s the time?”). Students are encouraged to use their multilingual resources to support their conceptual understandings of telling the time in all languages, including English.

Documents attached: 

• Worksheet: An empty clock
• Worksheet: The Clock
• Worksheet: Clocks in Vienna
• Worksheet: Digital Resources for learning to tell the time
• Worksheet: The Time
• Worksheet: Zeynab’s Timetable
• T-Instructions: Teaching the time multilingually