Minority Languages and Multilingual Education. Bridging the Local and the Global

Abstract

Gorter, D., Zenotz, V., & Cenoz, J. (Eds.), languages and Multilingual Education. Bridging the local and the global, New York: Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg, 2014, 220 p.The book is a collection of research regarding the problems that children who come from minority groups face when they are forced to learn an international language, in this case, English. The authors' main point of view is that combining the languages spoken by minority groups with the official language(s) of the national state and English result in educational and social difficulties that can be avoided by concentrating on learning minority languages.This book presents research done on problems that minority children face when trying to learn an international language, in this case, English. This book has the starting point of its research in the languages that are spoken within minority groups, taking the research beyond the local and perspective analysis to the context of multilingual education.Before moving forward with this review, let me elaborate a short biography of each of the authors involved in this writing, along with their experience in studying multilingual education.Durk Gorter is a professor within the Department of Theory and History of Education at Universidad de Pais Vasco/Euskal Herriko from Donostia-San Sebastian. He conducts research in the fields of multilingualism in educational context, comparative studies in the field of languages spoken by minority groups from Europe and linguistic perspectives in education.Victoria Zenotz Iragi is a lecturer within the Public University of Navarre, as well as a foreign language teacher councilor at Centro de Apoyo de Profesorado from Pamplona/Iruna, preparing foreign language teachers from all over Navarre.Jasone Cenoz is a professor of Applied Linguistics within the Department of Research Methods in Education at the University of the Basque Country. In her research, Prof. Cenoz concentrates her studies on the fields of psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and the bilingual and multilingual aspects of education. Her researches include the effect of bilingualism over acquiring a third foreign language, bilingual and multilingual education, languages spoken by minority groups and other fields.The three authors concentrate their research on the interaction between the languages and cultures of the minority groups, on one hand, and the languages spoken by the majority of the population as well as a lingua franca, on a number of regions and countries from all continents, on the other hand.Even though all chapters of this book reference only minority languages, I consider the problems discussed by Groter et.al. to be relevant in any instance where more than one language is used in order to stream the educational process.Thus, the book Minority languages and Multilingual Education. Bridging the local and the global brings forward the difficulties and opportunities of multilingual education, taking into consideration problems like: concepts of North and South, politics regarding multilingual education, linguistic diversity, interethnic understanding, multimodal linguistic practices, power, conflict, identity, prestige and many others.The point of view of the authors is that combining the languages spoken by minority groups with the official language(s) of the national state and the English language result in numerous difficulties both for the educational and social nature, when the simpler solution could be to focus attention on learning minority languages. Thus, through this book Groter et al. are trying to bring forward cases that take place in the field of multilingual education spread over five continents in order to demonstrate the evolutions, tensions and solutions of the contemporary era. In order to achieve this goal, the book references different multilingual educational contexts that imply using various minority and majority languages as well as the English language in the educational process. …

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