Multilingualism and Literacy Attitudes and Policies

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International Journal of Multilingualism

ISSN: 1479-0718 (Print) 1747-7530 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmjm20

Multilingualism and literacy: attitudes and policies

Susana A. Eisenchlas , Andrea C. Schalley & Diana Guillemin

To cite this article: Susana A. Eisenchlas , Andrea C. Schalley & Diana Guillemin (2015)Multilingualism and literacy: attitudes and policies, International Journal of Multilingualism,

12:2, 151-161, DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2015.1009371

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2015.1009371

Published online: 11 Feb 2015.

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INTRODUCTION

Multilingualism and literacy: attitudes and policies

Susana A. Eisenchlas*, Andrea C. Schalley and Diana Guillemin

School of Languages and Linguistics, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, Australia

( Received 14 January 2015; accepted 14 January 2015)

In this special issue we shine light on the relationship between multilingualism and

literacy and on dominant forces that shape it. Here we present a selection of peer-

reviewed papers presented originally at the Multilingualism and Literacy workshop held

at the 19th International Congress of Linguists in Geneva, 21 –

27 July 2013. That workshop explored the impact of multilingualism on the literacy development of both

children and adults, seeking to identify how literacy skills or lack of them in one language

can affect development of literacy in other language(s). This special issue focuses on two

particular factors that strongly affect achievement of literacy in multilingual contexts –

educational policies and societal attitudes – and therefore also considers community

responses these may generate.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Multilingualism and Literacy

workshop’s International Program Committee for their assistance in helping us to select

the abstracts for presentation and thank workshop participants and audience for

constructive comments and suggestions. We are also grateful to the editors of International Journal of Multilingualism, Professor Danuta Gabrys-Barker and Professor

Eva Vetter, for the opportunity to share these papers with a wider audience. Last but not

least, we express our gratitude to the papers’ peer reviewers, whose expertise and

assistance have helped make this special issue possible.

Background to this issue

Living in an increasingly multilingual world, we are interested in how languages do – and

do not – coexist in and among societies and individuals. As editors of this special issue,

we share the view that linguistic diversity should be actively cherished for the wealth of

personal, social and economic benefits it brings to individuals and communities (see

Bialystok, 2001), rather than simply ‘tolerated’ or worse, ignored or suppressed. We

believe that maintenance and development of one’s home language is a human right, as

recognized in several international conventions (Singh, n.d.).1 Moreover, we argue that

for minority language speakers, it is essential to develop literacy skills in their home

language (where the language has a written form), as well as in the mainstream language,

if high levels of proficiency in the home language are to be achieved and maintained.

This is where language policies have a crucial role to play.

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

International Journal of Multilingualism, 2015

Vol. 12, No. 2, 151 – 161, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2015.1009371

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

mailto:[email protected]://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2015.1009371http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2015.1009371mailto:[email protected]


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However, a cursory exploration of language policies across the globe reveals that in

most countries widespread societal and individual bi/multilingualism runs counter to the

language policies formulated under the mainstream ideologies of governments and

implemented through national and subnational education systems and programmes, as

illustrated by the papers in this issue. Needless to say, language policies in general and

education policies in particular do not exist in a sociopolitical vacuum but stem from, and

in turn inform, and indeed are used to inform, societal attitudes and practices. In the case

of minority languages’ education, the biggest challenge speakers and communities face is

overcoming the monolingual bias, at both societal and individual levels, that still operates

in most societies.

This special issue is motivated by our conviction that individual and societal interests

can be furthered by re-examination of language policies and attitudes in light of current

research findings, and by recognition that so-called minority languages are significant,

although often squandered, resources in our multilingual multiethnic societies. Thus, one

aim of this special issue is to raise awareness of the increasing personal, social and

economic costs of illiteracy that result from language education policies in variousregions of the world. The second aim is to showcase initiatives taken by minority

language-speaking individuals and groups, both within and outside the formal education

system, to redress the lack of institutional support for their languages.

We begin this introduction by debunking the monolingual bias at both societal and

individual levels. We then introduce the papers that comprise this special issue, each

illustrating different perspectives and approaches formulated to deal with the practical

challenges and opportunities posed by the quest for literacy in the context of

multilingualism.

Normative societal monolingualism

The precise number of languages spoken worldwide is still a matter of discussion. Debate

hinges, among other factors, on the definition of ‘language’ and its theoretical and

empirical distinction from ‘dialect ’. Most estimates range between 5000 and 7000

languages (Crystal, 1987; Tucker, 1999). Ethnologue, the most comprehensive catalogue

of the world’s languages, lists 7105 distinct living languages (https://www.ethnologue.

com/world). Since there are only 193 United Nations’ recognized sovereign member

states, a simple calculation highlights an obvious conclusion: there is no one-to-one

correlation between languages and nation states. Since the number of languages exceeds

the number of countries by almost 39 to 1, it can be safely concluded that languages

coexist at close proximities and that multilingualism is a well-established phenomenon

across the globe. Adding dialects to this equation significantly strengthens this point.

Although the concentration of languages is greater in some countries than in others,

there are very few, if any, monolingual countries. Even Japan, which is typically

considered one of the most monolingual countries, has three small linguistic minorities:

Ainu, Koreans and Chinese (Grosjean, 1982) as well as sizeable numbers of expatriates

speaking a wide variety of languages. English language is not only a compulsory school

subject, it has a palpable presence, especially through Japan’s relationship with the USA

through post-Second World War occupation and consequent security support and through

advertising appeal. Even so, less than a quarter of the world’s countries officially

recognize two or more languages (Tucker, 1999). As Clyne (2005, p. 169) noted, manycountries are still caught in the nineteenth century notion of the ‘language based

monocultural nation state in an era of unprecedented migration and international and

152 S.A. Eisenchlas et al.

https://www.ethnologue.com/worldhttps://www.ethnologue.com/worldhttps://www.ethnologue.com/worldhttps://www.ethnologue.com/world


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intercultural intertwining’.2 Yet even countries that recognize officially more than one

language usually fail to achieve equal status for all the languages spoken in their

territories.

Languages are not socially or politically equal, and some languages enjoy higher

prestige and support than others. The 2009 Bolivian Constitution, for instance, lists 36

Indigenous languages as official languages, in addition to Spanish. However, in practice,

the onus is on all Bolivians to master Spanish if they seek to achieve social mobility,

while there is no real incentive for Spanish first-language speakers to master any of the

Indigenous languages listed in the constitution, some of which are endangered or even

extinct. Another example of linguistic inequality in a multilingual setting can be found in

Canada, an officially bilingual country where the two mainstream languages of English

and French coexist – despite substantial variation in the language policies of the different

provinces and territories, and a rich variety of Indigenous languages spoken nowhere

else – but which is yet to cater for the educational needs of its increasingly diverse

migrant population speaking languages other than English and French. The Canadian

situation, it should be stressed, is the international norm rather than the exception when it comes to institutional support for minority languages in multilingual settings.

Linguistic diversity has long been shaped by dislocating processes that mostly involve

the exercise of power, such as colonialism, colonization, military invasion and

annexation, displacement of populations, and nationalism, as well as migration and

educational and economic imperatives (Crystal, 1987; Liddicoat, Heugh, Curnow, &

Scarino, 2014). These reasons are clearly not mutually exclusive: Australia’s multi-

lingualism, for instance, to a considerable extent stems from two main sources: British

colonization of a territory where Indigenous peoples spoke around 250 Indigenous

languages (Clyne, 2005) and extensive and ongoing migration particularly after

government restrictions on immigration were dismantled from 1966 (Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2012). Timor Leste’s multilingualism, to give another

example, stems from the coexistence of a number of Indigenous languages spoken in the

region with further languages imposed first by Portuguese colonization (1769–1975) and

subsequently by Indonesia’s forcible annexation (1976–1999; see Boon & Kurver, 2015).

As distinctive and complex circumstances determine the use and status of languages

in each society and the relationships among these languages, generalizations about

multilingualism applicable across all contexts are impossible. Societies formulate

responses to linguistic diversity based on their own backgrounds, needs, resources and

ideologies, as the papers in this issue illustrate.3

The monolingual mindset/normative individual monolingualism

The discussion above concerns national and societal bi/multilingualism. However, similar

trends apply at the individual level given that across the world bilingual/multilingual

people outnumber monolingual people (Scarino, 2014; Tucker, 1999). Yet there is a

pervasive assumption, in the Western world at least, that monolingualism is the norm and

bi/multilingualism is the exception. The proliferation of books and articles on the

advantages of bi/multilingualism can be seen as evidence that the normative mono-

lingualism assumption is alive and well. As Romaine (1995) observed, it would be

strange to find a book titled Monolingualism, since this phenomenon is taken as the

default and therefore not problematized. Being the ‘marked’ option – in terms of ideologyrather than demographic reality – it is bilingualism that needs to be explained and

justified. To corroborate this point, in April 2014 we conducted a title search in the

International Journal of Multilingualism 153


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biggest online bookseller, Amazon. The search yielded titles of 74 books using the search

term ‘monolingualism’, 3101 books using ‘ bilingualism’, and 1789 using ‘multi-

lingualism’. Excluding monolingual dictionaries and books that also deal with bilingual-

ism reduced the ‘monolingualism’ list to just three titles, all on monolingualism in the

context of language standardization or discussing linguistic ideologies. Monolingualism

appears to have lost its apologists in recent times.

The scarcity of defenders of monolingualism is a relatively recent development.

Equating monolingualism with normality has a long tradition, probably starting with the

curse of Babel (Genesis, 11, pp. 5–8) where linguistic diversity is inflicted on humanity

as a means of punishment, to ‘confuse their language so they will not understand each

other ’. Research in the early to mid-1900s similarly viewed bilingualism as a potential

mental handicap that would cause confusion in children and could result in ‘semilingu-

alism’, that is, the inability to develop adequate levels of proficiency in any of the

languages to which children were exposed simultaneously (Skutnabb-Kangas &

Toukomaa, 1976). Current scholarship, however, has moved away from the idea that a

monolingual upbringing is preferable to a bilingual/multilingual one. Research hasdocumented conclusively the many cognitive, affective, psychological and social

advantages associated with bi/multilingualism in general and with biliteracy/multiliteracy

in particular (see Bialystok, 2001; Eisenchlas, Schalley, & Guillemin, 2013, for an

overview). Bi/multilingualism is also now recognized for the symbolic capital it offers to

the individual, communities and nations (Clyne, 2005). Indeed, in the globalized

economy, language is a commodity that can have market value (Bourdieu, 1977) as

well as a marker of identity.

Yet these understandings have not impacted strongly outside academic circles.

Maintenance and development of home language/s that create and sustain bi/multi-

lingualism typically falls outside the scope of educational institutions (cf. Liddicoat &Curnow, 2014). Migrant/refugee parents and carers still struggle with potentially negative

consequences of their decision to raise children with more than one language. In some

migration countries, educators or other well-intentioned parties may still urge migrant/

refugee parents to switch to their new country’s mainstream language at home –

irrespective of their proficiency in that language – if they want their children to succeed

academically. The decision to maintain the home language is made even harder when the

home language is perceived negatively in the wider community or has little or no

institutional support, or when the cultural practices and norms of minority groups clash

with mainstream educational practices (as discussed by Stavans with regard to Ethiopians

in Israel, 2015). In these situations, minority languages become relegated to the privatedomain. Speakers seldom develop literacy in these languages, restricting their ability to

realize their linguistic potential to the fullest and reap the multiple benefits mentioned

above.

Why this special issue?

Our discussion so far points to the following paradoxes. First, while in most countries

linguistic diversity is a visible and audible reality, it is still recognized as a ‘marked’

occurrence in public discourse, and at times as something to be tolerated rather than

encouraged. Further, while solid research validates the claim that advantages accrue tothose with proficiency in more than one language, in many national and subnational

contexts assimilationist policies deny institutional investment to support minority



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language development. This lack of government commitment is particularly detrimental

to acquiring literacy in a home language, the topic of this issue.

Literacy is a very fragile skill. While acquisition of a home language is typically

through exposure, literacy in that language must be learnt. Research has shown that initial

literacy in the home language facilitates, rather than hinders, the acquisition of literacy in

additional languages (e.g. Benson, 2005; Bialystok, 2001). Since there is consensus that

literacy is essential for academic success, it can be argued that investing time and effort in

developing literacy in the home language first can enhance the scholastic experience and

achievements of children whose home language is a minority language. Many of these

children are considered to be ‘at risk ’ when submersed in mainstream schooling without

sufficient additional support. Yet few parents feel confident about their ability to develop

their children’s literacy skills in the home language. In some refugee communities fleeing

from protracted war, a high number of adults are illiterate themselves, so there is little

parents can do to foster literacy in their children. Furthermore, migrant and refugee

communities may not be concentrated in one geographical area, making provision of

home language literacy in ‘ethnic/community/Saturday’ schools, which could comple-ment mainstream schooling, impractical. Lack of resources and trained teachers

compounds the problem, in particular for smaller and more vulnerable communities.

These challenges bring us to the title of this special issue, Policies and Attitudes, and

to the question of the interplay between these factors. Do attitudes shape policies, or do

policies shape attitudes? Or is this another ‘chicken and egg situation’ in which both these

constructs impact upon each other? If, indeed, attitudes affect policies, whose attitudes are

incorporated when policies are decided, whose voices are heard and whose interests are

served; as Bourdieu put it, ‘who has the right to speech, i.e., to the legitimate language,

the authorized language which is also the language of authority’ (1977, p. 648).

As Bourdieu (1977, p. 648) has argued, ‘

language is not only an instrument of communication or even of knowledge, but also an instrument of power ’. Educational

programmes and practices in general, and decisions about language of instruction and

minority language maintenance more specifically, are defined by the interests of dominant

groups (Bourdieu, 1977; Martin-Jones & Heller, 1996). Schools, as social institutions,

play a crucial role in naturalizing or normalizing relations of power (Martín Rojo, 2014),

thus upholding the status quo or helping to create a new one if that is sought by those

who hold dominant power.

Subordinate groups, although limited in their access to power and capacity for

influence vis-à-vis mainstream society, are not totally powerless. Minority groups can

strategically position themselves with respect to the obstacles posed by the limits on their

access to opportunities by enacting greater or lesser degrees of resistance and

contestation. Here we must note that neither minority groups nor their responses are

necessarily homogenous. Numerous examples show sectors within these groups at times

embrace mainstream policies that they consider to be conducive to their own

advancement. One is the 1998 vote in favour of Proposition 227 (a.k.a. ‘English for the

children’) in California. This Proposition, which effectively banned bilingual education,

was passed by a 69% margin that included a significant proportion of Latino parents

concerned that their children would – if educated bilingually – fail to achieve the

linguistic abilities valued in mainstream educational and professional contexts (Johnson &

Martinez, 1999). Li and Chuk (2015) provide more recent evidence from Hong Kong

that members of minority elites may choose to master the dominant language at theexpense of, rather than alongside the home language, as a possible means of social

mobility. While these initiatives may be successful in terms of enculturation into, and



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perhaps upward social mobility in, the mainstream culture, the price minority, communities

pay is often home language attrition and the failure to benefit from the well-documented

advantages of a bi/multilingual upbringing.

Cooper (1989, p. 182) claimed succinctly that ‘to plan language is to plan society’,

and in line with proposals summarized above, warns that language planning is ‘typically

motivated by efforts to secure or maintain interests’ (p. 183). Thus, it is unlikely that

initiatives that can lead to more equal and inclusive education policies and education

outcomes will be imposed from above. Still, they can be initiated at the community level

and led by grassroots initiatives, as evidenced by formulation of the 1987 National

Languages Policy in Australia, as Schalley, Guillemin, and Eisenchlas (2015) discuss.

Social change happens when communities extend their aspirations beyond the restrictive

language policies of the day. Groups then start developing and implementing their own

solutions to the challenges they face, at times within the existing educational system, at

times outside and independently of it. Weth (2015), for example, describes the initiatives

of Moroccan Arabic (MA)-speaking children to write in their vernacular for the first time

using French orthographic conventions, providing evidence of bilingual children’smetalinguistic abilities. Examples of education and language policies in multilingual

settings, as well as attitudes held and initiatives taken in various contexts to redress the

resulting inequalities, are the focus of this special issue.

Organization and overview of this issue

The papers selected for this special issue are original investigations dealing with policies,

attitudes and practices that impact on bi/multilingual literacy acquisition by children and

adults. Since their focus is upon practical matters, the papers acknowledge theoretical

ground as the basis for their discussion, but do not explore central concepts that arecarefully defined and critiqued in theoretical/conceptual studies. The geographical areas

discussed in these papers are Australia (Schalley, Guillemin and Eisenchlas), Hong Kong

(Li and Chuk), Israel (Stavans), Timor-Leste (Boon and Kurvers) and France (Weth). In

terms of the age of learners under consideration, the papers span widely, including

emergent literacy (Stavans), primary schoolers (Schalley et al., Weth), university students

(Li and Chuk) and illiterate adults (Boon and Kurvers). The thematic sequence of papers

begins with educational policies and moves through a continuum across different learner

ages, looking at both formal and informal educational settings.

As mentioned early in this introduction, one of the most common sources of

multilingualism is migration. Countries that are strong targets of migration usually

experience a tension between support for the official language(s) and attitudes towards

the minority languages of migrants and refugees. This tension is felt particularly with

education policies and practices. The paper by Schalley, Guillemin and Eisenchlas,

‘Multilingualism and assimilationism in Australia’s literacy-related educational policies’,

focuses on Australia, where more than 300 languages are spoken and where 19% of the

population aged over five years speaks uses a language other than English at home. The

authors overview successive government education policies and plans formulated and

implemented from 1987, when Australia proposed the first comprehensive national policy

on languages in an English-speaking country. By Australia’s current policy standards, that

policy was remarkable in its explicit support for multilingualism, which the policy

perceived and acknowledged as an asset to the wider community. The authors’ analysis of policy documents reveals a steady narrowing in policy focus over time, paralleled by a

marked change in government attitudes towards minority languages, moving on to



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recognize these as a potential hindrance to its speakers use of the national language,

English, and in later documents plainly ignored.

The change in policy attitude towards multilingualism was motivated by, inter alia,

the finding that Australia lags behind other English-speaking nations on literacy, with

25% of Year 4 students failing to meet the minimum reading standard for their age.

Children with a minority language as their first language were said to represent one of the

most vulnerable groups with respect to achieving adequate levels of literacy. In a remedial

move, the philosophy and emphasis of education policy were shifted to focus exclusively

on English literacy, and the push for multilingualism was abandoned in favour of

assimilationist policies. The authors thus point to the negative correlation – the more

multilingual Australia became, the more assimilationist were the education policies, and

the more monolingual the orientation of the society. These education policies fail to

address the particular needs of children whose first language is not English. Neither do

they explore whether the academic challenges these children face could have been

diminished had the children been encouraged to develop literacy in their home language

first, and supported in this endeavour. The authors recommend better informed

philosophy and more carefully considered policy that promotes maintenance of home

languages and supports literacy acquisition in home languages so children, families,

communities and nation can reap the educational, cognitive, social and affective benefits

of bilingual upbringing.

Stavans’ paper, ‘Enabling bi-literacy patterns in Ethiopian immigrant families in

Israel: A socio-educational challenge’, focuses on a community that migrated to Israel in

the 1990s, has a low socio-economic status, limited schooling and non-Western oral or

literate cultural traditions. The academic achievement of youths in this community lags

behind that of their Israeli peers, but the school system has done little to bridge this gap.

This paper focuses on pre-literate Ethiopian children and the socialization practicesemployed by their families before children start the formal schooling process. The author

explores parental attitudes towards both the home language and the target language,

parents’ understandings of the role they play in their children’s education, and pre-literacy

practices in which parents engage with their children, which may facilitate or hinder the

transition from home to school. Data were collected from 67 dyads consisting of

Ethiopian Amharic-speaking parents and 3–7+ years old children, and included a

questionnaire on language attitudes and use, and extended discourse tasks, which were

recorded.

The results provided evidence of wide-ranging discrepancies between the practices

these parents engaged in, and their attitudes to formal schooling vis-à-vis mainstreamIsraeli parental practices. On parents’ roles in education, the questionnaire data revealed

that in general Ethiopian immigrant parents engage in their children ’s educational and

social life until the child reaches first grade. But once schooling begins, Ethiopian parents –

unlike Israeli parents – disengage from the child’s education, usually relinquishing

maintenance of the first language, culture and traditions. To investigate preparation

activities for later literacy development, parents were asked to perform various extended

discourse tasks. The data showed that Ethiopian parents prefer oral to written discourse as

the anchor for their literacy-driven parent –child interaction, and resort to descriptions and

folk narratives coinciding with expected vocabulary use and the cannons of narrative

syntax in their native language and culture. These practices may hinder the transition between informal home education and formal schooling and partly explain the gaps in

ability between these children and their Israeli classmates. The paper recommendation



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that the institutionalized language education policy be made more culturally and

linguistically inclusive to ease the transition between the two literacy traditions.

Weth’s paper, ‘Orthographic competence among multilingual school children: Writing

Moroccan Arabic in France’, discusses a study of literacy acquisition in a multilingual

society by exploring the written production of 10 young multilingual children of MA

background growing up in France. The participants were exposed to French literacy

practices at school, and to Standard Arabic (SA) classes delivered twice a week during

class time. However, SA is neither spoken nor written in the home, and instead is

available in the form of Koranic calligraphy, or ‘cadres’ that emphasize the sacred status

of texts from the Koran. Unlike the situation of migrant children in countries where no

institutional support for their minority languages is available, these children also attended

optional MA classes as extra-curricular activities financed by the Moroccan Government.

Since MA is not generally used for written purposes, the extra-curricular tuition children

received did not focus on literacy development.

This study investigated whether children would use their knowledge of the writing

systems they have already been exposed to in order to produce an orthographic

representation of their home language, and, if so, whether they model their production

on French or SA. Data were collected through a written production task, in which

children were asked to write a narrative in both French and MA based on a picture story.

This task required that children rely on the knowledge of the writing systems they had

already acquired to create a writing system for MA, devising phoneme–grapheme

correspondences and finding solutions for consistent representation of lexemes and

morphemes. All children used Roman orthography to produce their stories. Systematic

analysis of the children’s written productions provided evidence for a structured system

that exploited the participants’ knowledge of their second language (French) orthographic

rules to conceive a new writing system in their native language. These children had not used Arabic as a model for their written production. Despite exposure to written Arabic at

home and in school tuition, literacy in this language was low for all the participants, and

limited to passive recognition.

Li and Chuk ’s paper, ‘South Asian students’ needs for Cantonese and written Chinese

in Hong Kong: A linguistic study’, focuses on postcolonial Hong Kong and on changes

in Hong Kong’s language policy after the UK returned Hong Kong sovereignty to the

People’s Republic of China in 1997. Hong Kong’s language policy is currently

characterized by biliteracy and trilingualism. HK residents are expected to be able to

read and write Chinese and English and to speak Cantonese, English and Mandarin

(Putonghua). The authors investigate the linguistic challenges facing school students fromSouth Asian families in Hong Kong as they learn standard written Chinese. This is a

difficult learning task for these students given that the logographic, non-alphabetic script

is based not on Cantonese but on Mandarin, the mainstream education system lacks

academic support for students of diverse linguistic backgrounds, there are cultural

inconsistencies between the Confucian ethics embedded in the curriculum and the culture

and religious values of South Asian families, and the low levels of Chinese literacy in the

South Asian migrant communities make parents unable to help their children. Under

these circumstances, few South Asian students succeed in the mainstream school system,

but segregation in designated schools fails to create a language-rich environment that

facilitates these students’ ability to learn Chinese. The dropout and school failure rates arealarmingly high and few manage to develop a level of Chinese literacy that will allow

them access to education and career opportunities and enable their social mobility.



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To investigate learners’ perspectives on the factors that enhance or hinder their

acquisition of Mandarin-based written Chinese and Cantonese in Hong Kong, Li and

Chuk conducted focus group interviews with 15 South Asian students studying towards a

Bachelor of Education in English Language. These students were atypical in that they

belonged to the 1% of South Asians admitted into an undergraduate programme in

government-funded university-level institutions. The data revealed that despite their

academic achievements, these students generally experienced great levels of difficulty

developing Chinese literacy. Although most of them were proficient in two or more

languages, they were unable to use their bi/multilingual repertoire as a resource, as the

difference in writing systems did not allow for the transfer of skills. The only exceptions

were the students who had been enculturated into the HK education system since early

childhood. The authors offer explanations for their findings and conclude with specific

recommendations for policy change.

Boon and Kurvers’ paper, ‘Adult literacy education in Timor-Leste: Multi-layered

multilingualism’, focuses on language policy-in-education in a young multilingual nation

with a high level of illiteracy. Having emerged in 2002 from a long colonial past, first as aPortuguese colony (1769–1975) and then as a territory forcibly incorporated into

Indonesia (1976–1999), Timor-Leste has engaged actively in the process of nation

building. This paper turns to literacy acquisition in that process. While previous research

in this field is mostly concerned with child literacy acquisition, this paper explores adult

literacy development in multilingual classes, where both teachers and learners speak three

languages on average and both teachers and learners have to operate in Tetum, the official

language, which is not necessarily their first language.

This paper (1) compares the ideals of language policy vs. teaching and learning

practice in adult literacy classes; (2) investigates teachers’ and learners’ proficiency in

various languages, and their use of these in everyday life and classroom interactions; and(3) investigates the impact of language proficiency on the development of literacy in adult

learners. Interviews and classroom observations revealed extensive use of regional

languages for adult literacy classes, and that proficiency in Tetum was not necessarily an

advantage for the acquisition of literacy in Tetum. This is attributed to use of regional

languages in the adult literacy classes. The findings of this study suggest that resources

may be developed in these languages for teaching literacy – especially since both teachers

and learners are proficient in regional languages. If indeed using regional languages in

adult literacy classes facilitates the acquisition of literacy in Tetum as L2, this study

provides further evidence (and supports findings of much recent research) that literacy in

L1 facilitates literacy in L2.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See, for instance, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (1989) (International Labour Organisation, 1996–2014), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations HumanRights, 1989) and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (United Nations Human Rights, 1990).

2. The idea of the monolingual monocultural state was a myth even at the time of the

consolidation of the modern nation state. As Hobsbawm (1996, p. 1066) noted, this ‘

imaginedcommunity … would have surprised the founders of the original nation states. For them, theunity of the nation was political and not socio-anthropological’.

3. See Liddicoat and Curnow (2014) for additional examples.



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