Students' home languages and the struggle for space in the curriculum

Although the importance of using students' home languages in education has been recognised for many years, home languages that are not official languages often struggle to find space in school curricula. This paper examines the ways that language-in-education policies influence the space available for non-official languages in the curriculum. It begins with a brief overview of the historical context that shapes how languages are understood in education. It then presents a critical review of some policies that allocate space to students' home language in the curriculum in order to examine certain ways that such policies both allow and constrain that space. It examines contexts that exemplify some of the key issues which students' home languages confront in educational settings, whether they are present as official languages or non-official languages, as a medium of instruction or a class subject. It then identifies some of the factors that contribute to the marginalisation of students' home languages in educational policy and practice

The trajectory of a language policy : the First Language Maintenance and Development program in South Australia

This paper examines the development of the First Language Maintenance and Development (FLMD) program in South Australia. This program is the main language policy activity that specifically focuses on language maintenance in government primary schools and has existed since 1986. During this time, the program has evolved largely as the result of ad hoc changes, often resulting from decisions made outside the immediate scope of language maintenance provisions. The program was initially introduced as a general reform of language education in primary schools but eventually became a program focused specifically on language maintenance. The paper traces the ways that ad hoc changes have shaped the program, and how these have shaped the program over time. As a result of these changes over time, first language maintenance has moved from being an integrated focus within core language policy to being a peripheral language policy activity. As a result, although the FLMD represents an aspect of South Australia’s language policy, it does not have either a clear position within that policy nor does it have a clearly developed focus of its own

El es enfático del español colombiano.

El llamado “es enfático” ha sido considerado una manifestación de la seudohendida con la marca de determinante y relativo omitida (lo que está estudiando es derecho > está estudiando es derecho). Este trabajo estudia el uso de tal construcción en un corpus del español colombiano conversacional, tomando en cuenta sus características sintácticas, semánticas y pragmáticas. El análisis indica que la construcción no se limita a marcar contraste, como se había propuesto, sino que puede marcar también información no contrastiva, siempre y cuando ésta sea nueva. Sugerimos que a pesar de la variabilidad en la forma del verbo ser en la construcción (sea es, fue o era), éste funciona como una partícula y no como una forma finita del verbo cópula ser, por lo que concluimos que la construcción es independiente de la seudohendida