Language awareness in multilingual learning environments

Linguistic diversity in European schools is on the rise due to migration between European countries and refugee resettlement. Regional and minority languages also add to the linguistic diversity of the classrooms.

For example, the Eurydice report (2023) indicates that 11.5 % of 15-year-old students in the EU do not speak the language of schooling at home.

Language-aware schools

A teacher who is ‘language aware’ has a positive attitude towards linguistic diversity in the classroom and sees learning and using multiple languages as a resource and a source of richness. A language aware teacher understands the challenges that language can present to learning, especially when children grow up with more than one language or use a different language at home than the language spoken at school.

Schools should encourage learners to reflect on norms, values and attitudes towards language and cultural diversity, by discovering all the languages spoken within the school community, and involving parents and families, carers and the wider school community.

Language awareness, supported via a whole school approach, is a relatively new priority. This means it is important to ensure that teachers are offered related professional development activities, covering:

• Promoting linguistically sensitive teaching,
• Embracing linguistic and cultural diversity in multilingual classrooms, and
• Teaching the language of schooling in multilingual classrooms

For example in Luxembourg, a customised training programme helps improve understanding of what it means to be multilingual and how to teach multilingual students. In Finland, teachers are shown how to develop and implement a comprehensive project relating to linguistically sensitive teaching in schools.

A number of EU-funded projects also encourage language awareness, for example the Multilingualism Accelerator. Moreover, the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) has created a resource on language awareness for teachers of ‘non-linguistic’ subjects and different materials for multilingual classrooms, with support from the European Commission.