Trilingual students in crossfire: Plurilingualism and identities of the teenage foreign language learners at a ChaoXianZu [ethnic Korean] public high school in Northeast China

This study is a pilot project focuses on examining current issues concerning multilingualism and third language learning, as an initiative to rethink Foreign Language (FL) education in the 21st century. Its main goal is to understand the politics of multilingualism, language investment and identities of students in today’s dynamic classrooms. For a comparative purpose, the study looks into the situations of two groups of first year university students who are in a variety of transitions, especially the ones learning English or Japanese as a new foreign language (FL) or their third language (L3), at a main university located in the ethnic Korean Autonomous Prefecture, northeast China. The study should provide significant implications to the educators and program coordinators, for instance, by reporting the key findings of what does multi-/pluri-lingualism mean to the multilingual learners and their teachers, and how they use multiple (linguistic and media) resources in their FL learning/teaching.

Faculty Supervisor:

Daniele Moore

Student:

Partner:

University of Yan-bian (China)

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program: