RESEARCH PROJECTS
PhD Research
From assimilation to integration:
Legitimizing immigrant learners’ plurilingualism in Canadian second language education
The study investigates how existing official monolingual and bilingual policies in Canada validate or disparage the plurilingual and pluricultural practices and identities of recent Filipino immigrants to Canada learning English and/or French as a second language (L2) in the officially monolingual cities of Edmonton and Montréal. I will examine the lived experiences and centre the voices of newcomer Filipino L2 learners in their new environments as a way to engage existing educational and societal policies in Canada into shifting its monolingual and monocultural postures towards a more inclusive plurilingual and pluricultural stance. I hope to leverage this research to help inform a linguistically and culturally responsive Canadian L2 education that legitimizes the rich linguistic repertoires, diverse language practices, and complex identities of multilingual learners in their language classrooms.
This research is funded by the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada (Grant #752-2021-2284). *This research is ongoing.
MA
Research
Teaching plurilingually:
Perspectives and practices of ESL peers in a francophone Canadian college
The study investigated the plurilingual and pluricultural competence, practices, and identities of 20 adult English as a Second Language (ESL) student tutors and tutees at a francophone college (also known as College d'enseignement générale et professionnel, or, CÉGEP) in the greater Montréal area. The study adopted a convergent mixed methods design, and collected data through field observations, the Plurilingual and Pluricultural Competence (PPC) Scale, a demographic questionnaire, a plurilingual identity questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews. Deductive and inductive analyses showed that: (1) tutors tend to have higher PPC levels than tutees; (2) none of the tutors identified as monolingual (only as bi or plurilingual), while none of the tutees identified as plurilingual (only as mono or bilingual); (3) monolingual identity was strongly related to lower PPC levels; (4) regardless of PPC levels and linguistic identities, all participants were observed to use plurilingual strategies during their peer tutoring, namely translanguaging, translation, and cross-linguistic comparisons. Based on these results, I propose that existing ESL and other L2 classroom practices and policies must look at what L2 learners already to learn their L2, and to incorporate and validate students' plurilingual repertoires and practices in the classroom. As well, I propose that pre and in-service teachers be provided with training on how to include and apply a plurilingual dimension to their classroom practice.
Watch my presentation about this study at the 2021 conference of the American Association of Applied Linguistics here. Read part of my results in the 2022 Special Issues of TESL Canada Journal here, and of OLBI Journal here.
This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada.