Kevin-EN

How we hope plural approaches can change learners' attitudes

Hi, my name is Kevin. I am 13 years old and I live in Edinburgh with my family. I drew myself using four colors because I speak English at home, I hear my grandparents speaking Scots, a dialect in Scotland and I take Spanish at school. I also added a fourth color to show that I know some words in Arabic because my friends at school speak it. It's fun! Sometimes my parents don't know what we are saying when we are playing. It's our special code! Even though lots of people speak English, it is important to learn some other languages if I travel around the world and for my future job. It's also interesting to know my grandparent's dialect. It's part of our family. Sometimes my grandparents try to talk to me in Scots. I take Spanish at school and it's hard because it's the first language I've had to learn at school but it is helpful to see that there are some similarities between English and Spanish. That helps a lot ! My mom says that maybe I could take French later in high school. My teacher said that Spanish and French are close so I think it might not be too difficult after all.

Hi, I am Kevin

I am 13 years old and I live in Edinburgh with my family. I drew myself using only one color because I only speak English at home.

I don't think it's very important for me to learn other languages because people speak English everywhere. Sometimes my grandparents try to talk to me in Scots. That's a dialect here in Scotland. My grandparents speak English too so I don't think it is really useful to learn Scots.

Besides it is forbidden at school. We don't write in Scots so it doesn't really count. Everything is in English at school except I have to take Spanish as a foreign language. It's difficult for me because it's the first language I've had to learn. At least after next year though, I won't have to take it anymore.

My mom says that maybe I could take French later in high school. We'll see. There are some other kids in my class who speak other languages. Sometimes they talk to each other in their languages and I don't like that because I don't understand and they can talk about me and I don't know what they are saying. They should speak English at least at school.

Our multilingual world

CHALLENGES

RESOURCES

Transforming

Kevin doesn't appreciate why it could be beneficial to learn additional languages: career advancement, openness to the world which is largely multilingual

For teachers:

• See section Living in a multilingual & multicultural society

• See section Speaking about languages

For pupils:

• See section Dealing with facts & myths

Kevin displays a negative view of other languages and cultures whether they are dominant (Spanish, Arabic) or minority (Scots, Ingala)

For teachers: See sections scaffolding learning

For students: EOLE

Kevin doesn't make connections between his first language, English and his foreign language at school, Spanish

For teachers: See examples on:

For students: comparing languages, during content-based learning an openness to other languages, see CONBAT+