Talking multilingualism and motivation with Soukeina Tharoo
“In this first interview episode, Dr Liam Printer is joined by the inspiring and incredible @polyglotteacher Soukeina Tharoo. Soukeina is an English as an Additional Language (EAL) and French teacher as well as being the Home Language Coordinator at The International School of Lausanne in Switzerland. She is also a workshop leader and school visitor for the International Baccalaureate and a team evaluation member and Chair for the Council of International Schools. Soukeina was born in France but is originally from Madagascar, of Indian ancestry and was brought up in the UK. She speaks 11 languages (yes eleven) and is a fountain of wisdom when it comes to multilingualism, translanguaging and how we can leverage the home language in all classrooms to raise students' competence, relatedness and esteem."
Listen to the podcast below or click on this link.
Kletsheads
"Kletsheads is a podcast about bilingual children for parents, teachers and speech-language therapists. What can you expect if you’re raising your children bilingually? What’s important? What will help your children’s language development and what won’t? In each episode, Dr Sharon Unsworth, linguist and mother of two children (both bilingual, of course), discusses the science behind the language development of bilingual children with another expert. Along the way, there are practical tips, we hear from children about what it’s like growing up with two or more languages, and we talk to parents and professionals about their experiences with bilingual children."
"Curious about the name? Klets is the Dutch word for “chatter”. The podcast is a spin-off from the child language festival we’ve been organising for a few years now here in Nijmegen. The festival is called Kletskoppen, which means “chatterboxes” and literally translates as “chatter-heads”, hence the beautifully bilingual name for the podcast! The original podcast is in Dutch."
Teachers' Voices: Multilingualism in a Culturally Diverse World
If you’re an educator supporting children learning various languages, at different developmental stages and in different contexts and geographies, then don’t miss Kaja Jasinska, a cognitive neuroscientist interested in understanding how early life experience changes the brain’s capacity for language and learning. As well as Kaja’s insights, in this episode we hear from three teachers in different geographical regions around the world, all of whom support children whose mother tongue is perhaps not the same as the language in which they are being taught.
First we hear from Daniela, an Italian language facilitator supporting young bilingual kids in Luxembourg. Daniela works with young children supporting the link between heritage language, local languages and the development of early literacy. Then we travel to Nigeria to meet Olasunkanmi, an innovative international teacher prize winner who teaches English to lower secondary school students in a public school in a suburban area of Abuja. Finally we hear from Jose Luis, who tries to infuse his love of Spanish into older kids in an international private school in Singapore. Stay tuned until the very end to hear our expert, Kaja, share some observations on how educators might best support bilingual and multilingual children.
On this podcast:
- What’s happening in the brain of a multilingual child in the first few years of development
- How multilingualism affects reading development in children
- A child’s first language skills support their second language skills & literacy skills
- Quality education is key
