Du Iz Tak?

Some evidence of inclusion in (the) multilingual primary school

Authors

  • Emanuela Atz Language Centres, Bolzano
  • Elisa Fava Istituto Comprensivo Bassa Atesina
  • Cecilia Varcasia Free University of Bolzano

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/isla.25495

Keywords:

plurilingual approach, metalinguistic awareness, inclusion, primary school, learners'engagement

Abstract

This paper presents the results of the introduction to a project inspired by the éveil aux langues approach with the storytelling of the picture book Du Iz Tak? by the American/Canadian author Carson Ellis (2016). This propaedeutic activity was a multimodal input given in an unknown language to all children, namely an invented language. The aim of this study is to bring more evidence on how the development of metalinguistic awareness at a young age can help pupils meet their learning needs, especially pupils with SEN. Results show that telling a story in a invented language through the use of multimodal resources to convey meaning not only captures the attention of all pupils in the class, but leads them to observe and manipulate this language by making and developing hypotheses about languages, especially pupils with SEN.

Author Biographies

  • Emanuela Atz, Language Centres, Bolzano

    Emanuela Atz has been a second language teacher (Italian L2, ESL and DAZ) and teacher trainer since 1992. Her fields of interest are second language acquisition, plurilingual approaches and heritage languages. She is currently working at language centres in South Tyrol (Italy) supporting the inclusion of all children and those with international backgrounds in kindergartens and schools.

  • Elisa Fava, Istituto Comprensivo Bassa Atesina

    Elisa Fava graduated in philosophy and modern languages at the University of Trento where she specialised in intercultural and gender studies. She currently works as and Italian L2 teacher at I.C. Bassa Atesina (BZ) and I.C. Brentonico (TN).

  • Cecilia Varcasia, Free University of Bolzano

    Cecilia Varcasia is a fixed-term research assistant at the Free University of Bolzano, Italy where she teaches second language acquisition, teacher training, and multilingual literacy to prospective primary school teachers. Her research interests lie in second language acquisition, (plurilingual) linguistic education, pragmatics, interactional linguistics and language testing. 

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Published

2023-11-15

How to Cite

Atz, E., Fava, E., & Varcasia, C. (2023). Du Iz Tak? Some evidence of inclusion in (the) multilingual primary school. Instructed Second Language Acquisition, 7(2), 194-221. https://doi.org/10.1558/isla.25495

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