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Problematic Plurilingualism — Teachers’ Views

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Dangerous Multilingualism

Part of the book series: Language and Globalization ((LAGL))

Abstract

Once upon a time there was order in Finnish schools. All the students and teachers spoke the same language at school and at home, and shared many cultural habits and values. The only linguistic question ever discussed was the extent to which it was desirable to allow the use of the students’ home dialects within the educational system. For an officially bilingual country the school system was extremely monolingual: the Finnish and Swedish language schools lived (and still live) totally separate lives, under separate administrative systems. The only contact to anything foreign was the teaching of foreign languages such as English and German, and the mandatory second domestic language (see Salo, this volume). Language classes, however, were not really a place to use a foreign language, only to learn its grammar and words.

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© 2012 Sanna Voipio-Huovinen and Maisa Martin

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Voipio-Huovinen, S., Martin, M. (2012). Problematic Plurilingualism — Teachers’ Views. In: Blommaert, J., Leppänen, S., Pahta, P., Räisänen, T. (eds) Dangerous Multilingualism. Language and Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283566_5

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