Five on 5: Constructing the multilingual mindset

To celebrate World Teachers' Day on 5 October, Maria Norton presents Constructing the Multilingual Mindset, a 1-hour webinar for teachers, teacher educators and school leaders.

About the webinar

“A language is not just words. It’s a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It’s all embodied in a language.”

Noam Chomsky

Language is the vehicle through which we engage with the world and each other; at the core of our relationships and structures, it is fundamental for deeper learning. Recent research in cognitive science demonstrates how speaking more than one language promotes creativity and tolerance; it also enhances our problem-solving skills. By making the effort to pick up expressions in another language we are demonstrating our commitment to hearing other perspectives and showing respect for diverse cultures. This can be achieved by constructing the ‘Multilingual Mindset’: a more inclusive approach towards languages and culture.

One of the unhelpful assumptions about language competence is that anything that fails to reach “native-like” proficiency has only limited value. Why do we set ourselves such impossibly high standards?! This is one of several myths that I tackle in my webinar as I show you how to adopt the Multilingual Mindset: the new global literacy.

About the speaker

María started her career as a French and Spanish teacher in the UK but let the travel bug get the better of her! She moved to Italy to be an English teacher for the British Council, took on co-ordination of the Belgian teaching centre, stepped into marketing and training in Portugal, and progressed into managing education reform programmes in South Korea, then Tunisia after the Jasmine Revolution. Most recently she took a sabbatical to explore issues of identity and the multilingual mindset and so her webinar will share fresh insights.

Watch a recording of the webinar below

Research and insight

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