The Conference on Language Education Policy and Planning in Multilingual Settings, convened by the School of Foreign Languages of Southeast University and Asia-Pacific Language Policy Research Center of Jiangsu Province, took place on September 18, 2019 at the conference hall of the School of Foreign Languages at Southeast University, China. The opening speech was delivered by Professor Chen Meihua, Dean of the School of Foreign Languages. Under the theme “globalism, multilingualism, cultural and linguistic diversity,” the event demonstrated the importance of implementing proper language policy in education systems.
Guest speakers from prestigious universities in different parts of the world attended the conference and presented their research and investigations. Guest speakers include Dr. Andrew Moody from the University of Macau, Dr. Mingyue Gu from the Education University of Hong Kong, Dr. María del Pilar García Mayo from the Universidad del País Vasco UPV/EHU, Dr. Fan Fang from Shantou University, and Dr. Rining Wei from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.
Dr. Andrew Moody conducted research on the language policies of the preservation and endangerment of Cantonese in Macau’s education system. Findings of his research demonstrated that the Macau SAR government recognizes the need to implement measures that will protect Cantonese as Macau’s primary language, but, at the same time, has also implemented policies that threaten the predominance of Cantonese within the territory.
Dr. Mingyue Gu’s research demonstrated a Spatio-Temporal analysis of mobility, language and identity with migrant families in Hong Kong as the lotus of investigation. Drawing on the findings from two empirical studies, her presentation extended the investigation of family language policy from home domains to a broader range of contexts to address the influences from community, school and society.
Dr. María del Pilar García Mayo’s investigation showed how children successfully negotiate to make language meaningful, how they engage with the tasks and how they collaborate in different ways during these tasks. She concluded her investigation by highlighting the challenges and future research directions in this area.
Dr. Fan Fang presented his recent work exploring the “E” in EMI and promoting multilingualism and translanguaging in language policy. His main argument is that the “E” in EMI courses should be critically implemented from multilingual and translanguaging perspectives from the Global Englishes paradigm.
Dr. Rining Wei investigated students’ L1 and English-medium instruction in Chinese universities. Findings of his research demonstrated that stampeding universities into Anglophone monolingualism is probably a very short-sighted and ill-advised policy.
The closing remarks were delivered by Dr. Yonghui Hu, Associate Dean of the School of Foreign Languages.Reported by Zhao Xueyu
Photographed by Qu Gang
