Anne Holmen

Linguistic Diversity among Students in Higher Education: A Resource in a Multilingual Language Strategy?

The University of Copenhagen (UCPH) has recently launched a new language strategy, according to which the integration of language components in different academic studies should be encouraged. This strategy of More Languages for More Students has been developed as part of the UCPH language policy, which is referred to as a policy of parallel language use. This policy mainly deals with the balance between Danish and English in research and study programmes. However, with the new strategy, more languages are seen as resources for students — especially when academic language skills can be combined with content areas for purposes of studies, mobility or future employment. UCPH is not only a multilingual learning space through its language teaching, but also through the linguistic diversity which is brought into the academic learning environment with the language background and experience of the students. This chapter is based on a literature study of student perspectives on language issues, and particularly on the role which different groups of multilingual students ascribe to language in their academic learning experience. The chapter starts with a general background on the role of languages in public universities, such as UCPH, which may be characterized by internationalization as well as wider participation among the students.

Second Language Learning

The article presents a broad outline of the history of second-language learning from behaviorism with its emphasis on habit formation and the normative view of errors, through cognitive approaches focusing on language learning as skill learning and information processing to sociocultural theories of interaction and strategies. Furthermore, the article introduces specific topics within the field such as the relation between age and second-language acquisition, the differences between second- and foreign-language learning, and finally the key issues of school education and second-language learning in relation to minority children.

Shaping a Danish Multilingual University’s Language Policy: Gatekeepers and Drivers of Change

Within the last decade, many universities in non-Anglophone Europe have developed new language policies in order to sharpen their international profile. Since 2008, the University of Copenhagen has been guided by a parallel language strategy aiming at a balance between English and the national language Danish. In addition, the university has recently decided to develop a new strategy which introduces several other languages as potentially relevant for students in their academic programs and when they target the Danish or the international labor market. At an institutional level this is seen as a way of promoting quality of programs and securing the university’s position in the international market. However, neither all languages nor all four language skills are equally important for all purposes. Therefore a careful needs analysis is an important first step in order to decide which languages and language skills to include in the actual planning. At the University of Copenhagen the needs analyses involve students as well as instructors and members of study boards. These different participants in the academic community are often motivated by different perspectives on teaching and learning issues, e.g., on curricular priorities and traditions, but also hold individual preferences. Based on a language-in-education perspective, this paper will focus on the different organizational levels involved when developing and implementing a new language strategy and the possible alignments and mismatches between these levels. As an example it will look at the role of the French and German languages as mentioned by different stakeholders and compare this with the situation for English.

Additive Language Pedagogy: Aligning a Learner-Centered Approach with Student Diversity

OneofthestrongholdsofthephilosophyofeducationinDanishprimaryschoolsistobuildlearning activities on students ́ resources andknowledgebase.This calls for a differentiated approach to learning in classrooms characterized by increased linguistic and cultural diversity. However, for studentswithlanguageminoritybackgroundthisgeneralprincipleisoftensupersededbyafocuson homogenizationandsilencingofdiversity.ThisarticleisbasedonCummins ́distinctionbetween additiveandsubtractivebilingualism,anditintroducestheconceptofadditivelanguagepedagogy anddiscusseshowthiscanbedevelopedaspartoftheteachers ́instructionalpracticesinplurilingual settings. KEywoRDS Additive Pedagogy, Danish Primary Schools, Language Minority Students, Learner-Centered Activities, Student Diversity