An invigorating week at ECISMLIE Multilingual Week Conference 2021.

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting colleagues from around the globe at the ECIS MLIE Multilingual Week. Scheduled through the half-term break it was a real treat to reawaken my thinking on multilingualism and re-ignite my love for linguistics.  

Thank you ECISMLIE for such a well organised, invigorating conference. The opening session introduced current practice led by the #ECISMLIE Specialist Interest Group, and thanks to Zoom breakout spaces we got straight into idea sharing within the first hour! It was wonderful to see my colleague Deb Perrin, Head of EAL and her team in action presenting examples of the work they have been doing to embed translanguaging in daily learning for students and staff.

The week reminded me about conducting linguistics research into maintaining mother tongue in non-native environments and semiotics & multi-modal media projects within film-making for my MA. What a joy to rekindle memories and to switch the linguistic lights back on! The esteemed academic speakers created food for thought on current research and data which challenges a variety of claims on multilingualism. This invited us to assimilate traditional claims in areas such as single repertoire and 'the right' age for starting language learning against current evidence.

Each of the conference sessions resonated for me, inspiring questions and conversations with colleagues about how we approach bi/multilingualism and translanguaging as speakers of multiple languages ourselves, and in our international settings. 

I’ll be sharing my conference #takeaways from some of the sessions over the coming week. You can view my Day 2 A Critical Linguistic Approach recap here #MLIEWEEK @Araidigi Take Aways (2) on Canva.

Remote Collaboration – Does it work? 

International lockdowns and the readiness with which organisations now utilise remote platforms has been a real catalyst for streamlining access to information. A remote conference is travel-free and works around work and home life contexts. 

Within the first half hour, at home with an espresso in hand – buoyant academic discussion got underway with colleagues from Sweden, Germany, Netherlands and the UK in our Zoom breakout space, before delegates came back together to share feedback via the chat forum. 

Online Conference and Resource Sharing – Realtime and Seamless?

Collating chat threads, along with recording each of the sessions is such an effective way to collate resources which are then shared with delegates via a conference resource area. This online format is ideal for revisiting material and any sessions which delegates were not able to attend. Technology enabled layers of connection through a combination of realtime session dialogue, presentation and chat engagement.   

Two, well-spaced conference sessions per day over six days worked well and offered manageable attendance regardless of time-zones. 

My thanks to ECISMLIE for such a professional and energising #MultilingualWeek of learning!