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Abstract :
[en] Luxembourg, where three official languages are used concurrently, is also the EU member state with the highest proportion of resident foreigners. Currently, sixty percent of nursery children do not speak Luxembourgish as a first language. Already as six-year-olds, they will have to meet the challenge of a trilingual education system. Findings demonstrate that differences in educational achievement are strongly correlated with the social and cultural backgrounds of the pupils.
In the last ten years, early childhood education has seen the rapid development of non-formal educational institutions in response to societal and political pressures that demanded a greater focus on language development, school preparation and social inclusion. The exponential growth requires better provision and staff training.
Our in-service training for educators and teachers aimed at the development of the children’s multiple languages through the use of books, pictures and rhymes. During and after the training, the practitioners video-recorded their practices to aid reflection. Our continuing empirical qualitative study, based on visual ethnography, interviews and a survey, investigates both the oracy practices and the practitioners’ perspectives on language development. The presentation will focus on the practitioners and show that they occasionally underestimated the children’s language efforts, misinterpreted translanguaging, and were unsure of their structuring of activities. The collaborative reflections enabled them to develop new practices that capitalize on the children’s languages.