BLOGGING ABOUT MULTILINGUALISM
For my fifth blog post, I thought to discuss a very interesting blog post I found about how the International Baccalaureate (IB) program supports multilingualism in the classroom. I completed in high school the IB diploma program, so I was able to relate to this blog post and I found it intriguing.
The article talks about an international school in Germany that was faced with a range of students coming from very different families that spoke different languages. The school wanted to implement a multilingualism supporting curriculum and successful completed it implementing the IB program. For example, the IB curriculum supports everyone's native language while still pursuing other languages at the same time. The blog post discusses the positive effects of this and how the IB's curriculum has aided cross-cultural collaboration. Personally I can relate to this experience with the IB. My cultural differences from Finland were appreciated in class and I had much room to contribute my knowledge to class material and examinations. I felt like my opinions mattered while still being able to study Finnish through independent study of texts through IB. Furthermore, this blog post ties into the topic I was doing for Project 2: ESL teaching in classrooms. The IB presents a way that multitude of different languages can be taught in school and cultural appreciation can be implemented. Through my project, I concluded that cultural appreciation is needed and all students need to feel important. The IB curriculum supports this, and I would agree that it should be more widely spread to not only international schools, but also to regional schools across the world. http://blogs.ibo.org/sharingpyp/2015/02/24/culture-of-multilingualism/
2 Comments
4/5/2015 03:12:24 pm
I did not get a chance to take IB courses but this idea seems very interesting. I would agree that having cultural awareness of other individual's nationality is important. As Young says it is individual's "ATTITUDES" (62) that shape how others perceive a language. I feel as if these concept can be attributed to the teachers who teach these IB courses. However, I would like to ask specifically how were each individual's native language supported? DO the curriculum differ greatly from AP or regular courses?
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Anu Kafi
4/6/2015 03:09:56 am
I am glad to read about your insight on the topic on IB, as I went to a HS where AP was only offered, and can attest to the fact that cultural background and such was not a topic brought up often or given time to discuss. AP classes, at my high school were often just courses that fed you information as quickly as possible and given tests to determine your retention of this information. There was not much room for self expression like in the IB program.
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