Guest editors: Dr. Riitta-Liisa Valijärvi (University College London, Uppsala University) and Dr. Eszter Tarsoly (University College London)
Over the past three decades there has been an increasing interest in language endangerment, revitalisation and documentation. This interest has led to the establishment of a variety of training programmes and courses intended for linguists, university students, educators, language planners, activists and members of native-speaking communities. The inclusion in the mainstream school curriculum of languages spoken by various minority groups has also seen innovative approaches emerging in recent years. This special issue aims to synthesise the expertise accumulated in these settings and to critically survey various programmes and approaches.
The proposed issue builds on the strength of the 2011 issue of The Language Learning Journal (39, no.2), which addressed the teaching and learning of languages of the wider world in order to promote awareness of linguistic diversity. The proposed special issue re-centres the debate by focusing primarily on endangered and minority languages from a critical pedagogical angle, which will include discussion of a broad variety of educational contexts and methods, ranging from support to revitalisation efforts, teaching in school settings, community-based learning, and academic courses.
Papers are invited on the following areas:
− established language teaching methods (e.g. communicative method, grammar and translation method, audio-lingual method, multimodal and co-operative learning, discovery methods, total physical response, etc.) and their applicability in the field of teaching minority and endangered languages;
− methods encouraging intergenerational collaboration, such as language nests, taiga and tundra schools, as well as collaboration across various social sectors (e.g. co-funded language programmes);
− translanguaging pedagogy to teach minority and endangered languages;
− workshops and courses aimed at endangered-language community members to document their own language, including grammars and dictionaries designed for the purposes of revitalisation;
− courses and training programmes using translation and/or digital (e.g. Wikipedia) methods to teach minority and endangered languages;
− the use of Second Life and other e-learning platforms to teach minority and endangered languages;
− survey courses in secondary and higher education addressing the theme of linguistic diversity, endangerment, and minority languages for non-specialist students
− specialised courses for students of linguistics focusing on field methods, language documentation and revitalisation, language loss and identity, individual linguistic repertoires, anthropological and sociolinguistic approaches.
All papers will be published online as soon as they are accepted and finalised for publication.
Papers should be submitted to the guest editors by 30 June 2019
For expressions of interest and further details, please contact the guest editors at [email protected] and [email protected]