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ABSTRACT
The student body is becoming increasingly diverse in terms of language, nationality and cultural background. This study explores ways in which such linguistic diversity can be harnessed in the language classroom to enhance the language learning process. This paper describes a series of activities which were designed and implemented in four higher education language classrooms in Ireland. The activities included awareness-raising of the language profile of students taking a particular language module, and facilitated comparison of key grammatical concepts in both the target languages of the groups concerned (German and Japanese) and in the other languages in the participants’ linguistic repertoires. The grammatical concepts included cases, sentence structure, tenses, passive voice and register. Analysis of participant feedback indicates that 36% of the participants were unaware of the other languages spoken by their fellow students prior to participating in the study, with 80% describing such knowledge as valuable to them. More than two-thirds (70%) of participants described the activities as aiding their study of their target language.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The study was conducted in line with institutional guidelines on research ethics and written permission for the research was received from the Institutional Research Ethics Office. According to institutional requirements, all students who participated in the study received a Plain Language Statement explaining the purpose of the study and signed an Informed Consent Form.