News Article
Eleven SIL presentations at international multilingualism conference in Kenya
(July 2010) An International Conference on Multilingualism was held 22–23 July at the Kenyatta University Conference Center in Kenya. It was co-hosted by the Department of English and Linguistics at Kenyatta University, Kenya and the African Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. The conference theme was "Multilingualism and Education: Global Practices, Challenges and the Way Forward."
One of three keynote addresses was presented by Susan Malone, Ph.D., an international consultant in multilingual education, SIL International: "Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education that Builds a 'Strong Bridge' for Life-Long Learning." The discussant for her address was Barbara Trudell, Ph.D., Director of Academic Affairs for SIL Africa Area and an international literacy and education consultant. Dr. Malone was also the discussant for another keynote address.
The conference brought together researchers, professionals, classroom practitioners, policy-makers and language specialists interested in issues that relate to multilingualism, education and linguistic diversity as global phenomena.
Papers presented by SIL personnel
Other SIL specialists in multilingual education and literacy gave presentations ranging from research findings to analyses of practice.
- MoTefera Endalew and Mesfin Derash: "Language Development and Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education: Preliminary Assessment of the Bench-maji Project, South West Ethiopia"
- Dennis Malone: "The Catch-22 of Teacher Education for Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education: Teaching and Learning in Ethnic Minority Communities in Asia and Africa"
- Jacqueline Marshall: "Teaching Methods and Materials for 'Resources-Light' Implementation of Multilingual Education in Southern Sudan"
- Prossy Nannyombi: "Use of More Than Two Languages in the Education Curriculum Quality, Practices and Policies in Uganda"
- Robin Rempel: "'We want the Line to Droop': The Need for Participatory Socio-linguistic Orthography Development of African Languages to Give MLE Wings"
- Robin Rempel: "Why the Primary School System of Uganda is Failing and What it will Take to Turn the Tide"
- Tanya Spronk: "Addressing the Challenges of Language Choice in the Implementation of Mother-tongue Based Bilingual Education in Southern Sudan"
- Agatha J. Van Ginkel: "The Vocabulary Challenges in Materials Development for Multilingual Education"
Two papers were presented in plenary sessions at a symposium on "The Multilingual Education Network of Eastern Africa." Barbara Trudell also serves on the steering group of this network.
- Grace Bunyi, Jayne Mutiga and Barbara Trudell: "Language-and-education Issues in Africa: Setting the Context"
- Barbara Trudell and Angelina Kioko: "The MLE Network Phenomenon"
Conference themes and sub-themes
- Language policies and language choice in a multilingual education context
- Linguistic challenges in a multilingual set-up
- Benefits of mother-tongue education in early childhood
- Teaching methodologies in multilingual education
- Multilingualism in education in Africa: Reality on the ground
- Multilingual education and IT or computing
- Models for multi-literacy, multilingual and multimodal practices
- Benefits of multilingualism in education
- Socio-cultural issues, multilingualism and special language needs
Related links of interest
- Official Meeting website
- Multilingualism presentation at E-9 summit in Nigeria (June 2010 News Article)
- Multilingual Education
- Literacy and education in SIL
- SIL mother-tongue literacy programs
- Language and the Millennium Development Goals
- Bamako International Forum on Multilingualism (January 2009 News Article)
- International language and development conference (June 2009 News Article)