Language Learning in Study Abroad

The Multilingual Turn

Wenhao Diao, Emma Trentman, Wenhao Diao, Emma Trentman

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781800411357
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachwissenschaft

Vestiges of monolingual bias are present in the portrayal of study abroad as an idealized monolingual immersion experience and the steps many programs take to encourage or enforce target language monolingualism.In reality, study abroad is often inherently multilingual. This book addresses the need for a recognition of the multilingual realities of study abroad across a variety of traditional and non-traditional national contexts and target languages. The chapters examine multilingual socialization and translanguaging with peers, local hosts and instructors; how the target language is necessarily entwined in global, local and historical contexts; and how students negotiate the use of local and global varieties of English. Together the chapters present a powerful argument for scholars and study abroad practitioners to consider and critically incorporate multilingual realities into their research and planning.

1Ghanaian Multilinguals on Study Abroad in Tanzania: Learning Swahili through Akan/Twi and Cultures of Storytelling

Jamie A. Thomas

Introduction: A Multilingual Language Classroom at an East African University1

In urban Dar es Salaam, the principle economic center of Tanzania, life is rapidly changing. From a Tanzanian perspective, the widespread impacts of international development, formal education and digital culture in East Africa have turned attention to music videos, movies and computers, and away from the oral storytelling that has entertained for centuries. This urgent issue prompts Magdeline,2 a professor and instructor of Swahili language, to raise the subject with her students. The University of Dar es Salaam, where she teaches, has for many decades participated in international education as an active site of study abroad and language learning for hundreds of non-Tanzanians each year.

Within contexts of Swahili language learning it is customary to refer to instructors as Mwalimu, or Teacher, and Mwalimu Magdeline communicates freely across Swahili and English in class. Even as her students come from a variety of study abroad programs and home countries, including Canada, China, France, Germany, Ghana, Italy and the USA, they all understand her mocking of bilingual teenager-speak:

Kwa sababu ya maendeleo, watu wanapenda sana kusikiliza muziki, kuangalia labda filamu. Lakini zile hadithi za kusimuliwa kwa mdomo, ‘Ah. You are wasting my time! You know, mimi nimezaliwa kipindi cha kompyuta! Kwa hiyo napotezea muda! Kwa sababu unazungumza, unazungumza.’ […] Kwa hiyo, kidogo utamaduni wa kusimulia hadithi, kwetu kama Tanzania, unapungua. ((kimya zaidi)) Unapungua. ((kunong’onezea)) Unapungua.

Because of development, people really like listening to music, watching films perhaps. But those stories narrated orally, ‘Ah. You are wasting my time! You know, I was born in the digital age! So that wastes my time! Because you talk on and on.’ […] Therefore, little by little the culture of oral storytelling, here in Tanzania, is declining. ((quieter)) Declining. ((whispering)) Declining.3

Mwalimu Magdeline’s voice lowering for dramatic effect, it communicates her interest in rescuing the importance of Swahili storytelling. She also uses the Swahili and English typical of formally educated Tanzanian city-dwellers for whom English, in particular, connotes digital culture and international modernity. Dividing the languages above the phrasal level, her bilingual speech avoids the morphosyntactic comingling characteristic of many Swahili-English speakers (e.g. Blommaert, 1992; Githiora, 2018; Myers-Scotton, 1995).4 As a result, her crosslinguistic behavior communicates ideological investment in Swahili and English as separate named languages.

In this way, Mwalimu Magdeline’s opening monologue begins the intermediate-level Swahili language class by intimating tensions in the social status of Swahili and English. Her explicit reference to maendeleo (development) distills her view of how English enters Tanzania from the outside and disrupts Swahili’s cultural ecosystems through its technologized appeal. Her critique suggest...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Introduction: Multilingual Approaches to Language Learning in Study Abroad
• 1. Ghanaian Multilinguals on Study Abroad in Tanzania: Learning Swahili through Akan/Twi and Cultures of Storytelling
• 2. When the Foreign is Familiar: An Afro-Dominican-American Woman’s Experience Translanguaging Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage Learning Portuguese in Brazil
• 3. An Investigation of L2 Learning Peer Interactions in Short-Term Study Abroad
• 4. Monolingual Expectations and Plurilingual Realities in Arabic Study Abroad
• 5. Language Use, Class and Study Abroad in China
• 6. ‘Sorry, I don’t speak any English’: An Activity-Theoretic Account of Language Choice in Study Abroad in South Korea
• 7. Study Abroad as a Transformative Translanguaging Space for Heritage Speakers of Spanish
• 8. Encountering Multilingualism in Study Abroad: Sojourners’ Orientations to Linguistic Diversity and Language Hierarchies in Barcelona
• 9. Research on Language Learning during Study Abroad: What Next?
• Index