Preparing Teachers as Multilingual Educators: Optimizing Achievement of National English Language Education Policy Objectives in China

Abstract

China in the past decades has attached greater importance to English language teaching (ELT) and teacher education. Introduction in curriculum policy and English language teacher education of teaching approaches from Anglophone settings that advocate English-only in the English classroom is arguably out of step both with more traditional approaches and with current practices teachers adopt in English language classrooms. In this chapter I use the example of students with Cantonese language backgrounds to argue for reorientation of approaches to language teaching in English teacher education to embrace contemporary multilingual approaches to language teaching and learning, and to validate the educational value of language alternation practices already in use in many classrooms. Cantonese speaking English learners in Guangdong province are a significant but officially unacknowledged minority language group whose language learning could arguably be advantageously progressed if multilingual approaches that embraced all the linguistic resources learners have at their disposal were adopted. The chapter outlines the place of Cantonese in the linguistic landscape, includes an examination of current English policies and teaching approaches, provides a brief consideration of monolingual and multilingual approaches to language teaching, and surveys the research literature on practices of alternation of the language of instruction in English classrooms. The chapter concludes with a call for reorientation of English teacher education policies to acknowledge a multilingual approach to language teaching and learning that prepares teachers as multilingual educators capable of planned and judicious use of both their and learners’ language resources to optimize achievement of national language education policy objectives.