Professor Lorna Carson

Read with MEE: Read with Multilingual Early Education Erasmus+ project that supports literacy development in young multilinguals aged 2-6, especially those from minority and migrant language backgrounds.

INCLUDEED ("Social cohesion and INclusion: DEveloping the EDucational possibilities of the European Multilingual Heritage") is a multilingual project whose main objective is the integration of immigrant and refugee groups in Europe through one of Europe's main assets: its languages. It involves the participation of leading universities in Applied Linguistic and language teaching. The consortium has previous joint experience in creating high quality materials for the use with groups at risk of exclusion. This project has the inclusion of disadvantaged groups as a central aim of its actions. With this, it responds directly to the priority "Social inclusion", and does so with an innovative approach in two ways: on the one hand, it addresses the sociolinguistic and cultural integration of groups of immigrants and refugees who already have basic linguistic skills in the host language. It is therefore a further step in their process of adaptation to the new environment, acquiring very important skills in the development of their professional and personal activities.

BAQONDE Erasmus+ KA CBHE

The VirtuLApp project is delivered by an international consortium, comprising the Fryske Akademy/Mercator Research Centre (The Netherlands), ATiT (Belgium), Luca School of Arts (Belgium), Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and Universidad del Pais Vasco (Spain). Together, we are developing an innovative multididactic approach which teachers can use in the classroom in any multilingual situation. The needs of teachers (more knowledge about and tools for multilingual education, integration of migrant languages and lesser language separation) will be addressed with the development of a multi-player augmented and virtual reality app about multilingual education and the development of a digital handbook and toolkit with video-based documentation of best-practices of schools already using the heteroglossic approach in the classroom.

This research project forms part of a large-scale research initiative 'Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community', an AHRC-Funded OWRI Programme, based at the University of Manchester, and in collaboration with the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Its focus is the intersection between multilingualism, language learning and higher education. The constantly increasing voluntary and forced mobility of people resulting from the forces of globalisation and political instabilities in various regions are having a dramatic impact on the linguistic make up of many nation-states, especially in Europe. New forms of linguistic diversity and multilingualism are emerging, involving different linguistic practices. These developments may result in changing attitudes towards multilingualism and in different views about the learning of other languages (e.g., which and how?). To date these issues received limited attention in the context of higher education. As universities play a key role in the preparation of the next generation of global citizens, it is important to examine students' linguistic profiles, language attitudes and language learning experiences as well as to gauge their language learning needs to operate successfully in the linguistically diverse and complex environments created by globalisation.