Body Languages: Drawing Your Multilingual Self

Author: Lucy Jenkins
Published: 5th December 2019

Summary of research: This event built on work by MFL Mentoring to explore the theme of the multilingual self. It included a pupil workshop with activities focused on exploring the relationship between identity and language. Creative research methods were used to research how pupils view their multilingual selves. The event concluded with a roundtable discussion involving teachers who have participated in the project for two or more years to examine the wider impact that the project has had on the school body and culture.

Funder: Economic and Social Research Council – June 2019

Summary of outcomes:
1. Workshop with Willows High School. The findings from this workshop about how pupils conceive themselves as linguists have been fed into an article for British Educational Research Association written by Gorrara, Jenkins, Jepson, and Machin 2020. ‘Multilingual perspectives: preparing for language learning in the new curriculum for Wales’, The Curriculum Journal, special issue, ‘Re-educating the nation: the development of the new curriculum in Wales’ (April 2020). Click here to view.

2. Workshop with teachers from secondary schools involved in MFL Mentoring for two or more years. The outcomes from this workshop were used as evidence for the external evaluation conducted in 2019, to evaluate the impact of the project on wider school cultures and approaches to languages, when a school has engaged over an extended period of time.

Follow @2210Lucy on Twitter.