Cindy Brantmeier is named to the advisory board for LANGUAGES, a multinational language acquisition research study being conducted in England, Norway and France, funded by the Research Council of Norway.
LANGUAGES is coordinated by the University of Oslo in collaboration with universities in Norway (University of Bergen), France (École normale supérieure de Lyon) and the UK (University of Exeter and University of Oxford). Researchers in this international collaborative project will systematically conduct comparative European classroom studies to gain new insights into current language instruction and promising initiatives, as well as possible solutions to problems with classroom interaction, inclusion, and identity, in order to provide quality education for future multilingual, global citizens.
LANGUAGES will examine teachers’ instruction and students’ use of languages in classrooms that are strategically sampled to include language in homogeneous and heterogeneous contexts, in three countries that have different official languages and varied language policies. Language use and instruction across contexts (LANGUAGES) - Department of Teacher Education and School Research (uio.no)
Brantmeier, who is a professor of Applied Linguistics and Global Studies in Arts and Sciences, is principal investigator in the Language Research Laboratory at Washington University where she and her team conduct experiments to examine variables that enhance or hinder language acquisition, including linguistic and language mechanisms as well as socio psychological factors, across stages of language acquisition.
In her recent meetings with members of the research team at the University of Oxford, Brantmeier referenced the importance of multilingualism on local, national and global levels, and she stated that “All educators, including university level professors, should draw on their students’ diverse linguistic competencies and heighten multilingual awareness across all disciplines, not just in the language and linguistics classes. It is exciting to collaborate with researchers who also see societal multilingualism as a way of life. While this research team is looking to me for expertise and guidance with the language acquisition research, I feel that I will learn a lot from them and hope to bring this knowledge back to the USA where some practices and policies can be strongly influenced by monolingual ideologies.
