Multilingualism as a resource in the

foreign language classroom

Veera Illman and Päivi Pietilä

Foreign language classes are becoming increasingly multilingual even in

countries that until recently have been remarkably monocultural, such as
Finland. Teachers may not be prepared for this new situation, and the needs of
students with immigrant backgrounds may be overlooked. This article reports
a study in which both students with immigrant backgrounds and teachers
of English were asked how they experienced multilingualism in the language
classroom and how the students’ multilingual background was taken into
account in English classes. Both groups answered a questionnaire with closed
and open questions. The results indicated that the children found English
relatively easy to learn and they were able to use their L1s especially to benefit
vocabulary learning. The majority of the teachers had not received any training
in teaching students of immigrant background, but they reported having
developed some strategies that utilized their students’ multilingualism for the
benefit of teaching English.
Introduction
In recent years, many European countries have witnessed an
unprecedented influx of immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers. In
Finland, the number of foreign citizens has doubled in the past ten years,
i.e. from 120,000 to about 244,000 (Official Statistics of Finland 2017).
This means that the country is becoming increasingly multilingual,
which creates new challenges for society and not least for the country’s
education system. Indeed, linguistic and cultural diversity are emphasized
in the national core curriculum more than ever before (Finnish National
Board of Education 2014), but it is not clear whether the multilingual
backgrounds of school children are actually taken into consideration in
classrooms. After all, teachers have not necessarily been prepared for this
new situation.
The need for more research on foreign language learning of immigrant
children in Finland has been recently acknowledged. In the English
language classroom, children with immigrant backgrounds usually face a
situation in which they have to learn the target language (English) through
another language (Finnish) which is not their L1 and which they may
not master very well. It comes as no surprise, then, that their learning
results have been found to be lower than those of native Finnish speakers
(Airaksinen 2013).

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 The study reported here set out to explore the current situation in
English classes from the point of view of both children with immigrant
backgrounds and teachers who teach them. We were interested in
discovering whether children with immigrant backgrounds managed to
use their multilingualism for their benefit in the classroom. Similarly,
we wanted to see whether teachers took the children’s native languages
into account in teaching, and how they thought the learning process of
immigrant children could be supported.
A holistic approach Multilingualism, understood here to mean the ability to use more than
to language learning two languages at least to some extent, or in the words of Linck et al. (2015:
666), ‘having some degree of proficiency in more than two languages’,
has not always been viewed positively. In fact, it used to be assumed
that bilinguals, and certainly also multilinguals, were at a disadvantage
compared to monolinguals. On the one hand, it was believed that their
brain would have less room for other skills, such as mathematical or
creative skills; and on the other hand, their languages were believed to be
only partially developed compared to monolinguals’ one well-developed
language (Baker 1988). This monolingual bias, i.e. the constant measuring
of L2 competence against monolingual norms, has figured extremely
strongly in L2 research (Ortega 2014).
A more recent understanding of multilingualism recognizes the potential
of an individual’s linguistic repertoire, instead of seeing it as a handicap.
Linguistic diversity is seen as a resource, and raising learners’ awareness
of languages, their differences and similarities, is understood to support
language learning. New approaches to multilingualism have thus
emerged with a strong emphasis on regarding an individual’s languages
as mutually interacting and thereby supporting the language learning
process. Two of the main proponents of this holistic approach to language
learning, Cenoz and Gorter (2011a: 340), emphasize the fact that
multilinguals and learners who are in the process of becoming
multilingual should not be viewed as imitation monolinguals in a
second language or additional language, but rather they should be seen
as possessing unique forms of competence, or competencies, in their
own right.
The main idea, then, is to take into account all the languages a learner
knows. Furthermore, rather than focusing on how a learner differs from
a native speaker, the holistic approach concentrates on what multilingual
leaners can do with their languages (Cenoz and Gorter ibid.: 342). This
softening of boundaries between languages can be seen in the language
classroom in various forms of translanguaging, i.e. activities involving
more than one language (see the following section).
The concept of multicompetence, or ‘the knowledge of more than one
language in the same mind’ (Cook 2008: 11), also supports the idea of
making use of all the languages an individual has in his or her linguistic
repertoire. According to Cook, knowing more than one language makes
an individual different from a monolingual in many ways—e.g. by
affecting the way they use their L1, and by increasing their linguistic
awareness, and even by modifying some of their cognitive processes—and

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 therefore people who speak more than one language should never be
compared to monolingual speakers of those languages. This means that
language teaching should not aim at anything as unrealistic as native-like
competence, but rather strive to produce proficient language users who
are able to utilize all the languages they know.
Focus on multilingualism (FM), another approach that looks at the whole
language repertoire of a multilingual language user, also considers
the relationships between languages and the way they affect each
other. According to Cenoz and Gorter (2011b), FM aims at enhancing
metalinguistic awareness of learners by creating classroom activities that
involve translanguaging, again emphasizing the softening of boundaries
between languages. The use of code-switching, i.e. switching from one
language to another, in the classroom is strongly supported by FM, as
multilingual students often have to switch between languages in their
everyday lives outside school.
A holistic approach to multilingualism and language learning is also
represented by the dynamic model of multilingualism (DMM), introduced by
Herdina and Jessner (2002). According to DMM, an individual’s language
systems are separate but in constant interaction with each other, which
means that a new language affects the whole multilingual system of an
individual, e.g. by increasing the learner’s metalinguistic awareness. As
multilingualism is more common than monolingualism, multilinguals
should be considered the norm and, similarly to the views presented
above, they should not be measured by monolingual standards (Herdina
and Jessner 2002). Translanguaging, or using more than one language in
a learning activity, is, not surprisingly, advocated by the different versions
of the holistic approach. The following section gives a brief review of
translanguaging.
Translanguaging Translanguaging can refer to a pedagogical strategy that includes
intentional use of different languages, or as defined by Cenoz and Gorter
(2011b: 359):

[Translanguaging is] the combination of two or more languages in a

systematic way within the same learning activity.
García (2009) views translanguaging as the discursive practices of
bilinguals, thus including spontaneous ways in which bilingual and
multilingual language users switch between their languages. However,
it is noteworthy that translanguaging is understood to be a wider
concept which contains not only code-switching but many other kinds of
multilingual practices as well. Examples include activities in which the
input and output are in different languages, e.g. reading a text in the L1
and preparing a presentation based on it in the target language (García
ibid.: 301).
The use of the learners’ own languages as a resource in the EFL classroom
is also advocated by Corcoll López and Gonzáles-Davies (2016), who
propose two strategies within the framework of translanguaging:
pedagogically based code-switching (PBCS) and translation for other
learning contexts (TOLC). According to the authors, both of these

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 are teacher-initiated actions that foster efficient language learning by
sensitizing students to similarities and differences between languages.
An example of PBSC is an activity in which children replace words in an
English chant with suitable words from their own languages and finally
sing the different versions. A TOLC task might involve translation of false
cognates, for example (Corcoll López and Gonzáles-Davies ibid.: 73–75).
The present study arose from the research and rationale presented
above. As stated in the Introduction, we wanted to examine the situation
in Finnish schools to see what possibilities for language learning and
teaching could be found in the multilingual backgrounds of immigrant
children and how these possibilities are exploited in the EFL classroom.
The study The research questions were the following:
1 How much and in what ways do children of immigrant background
take advantage of their multilingualism when learning English?
2 How are immigrant children’s native languages taken into account in
teaching?
3 What are the teacher perceptions of how the learning process of
immigrant children could be supported?
The hypothesis related to research question 1 was that the students would
actively use their native languages as a resource when learning foreign
languages. This hypothesis was based on previous research, as Linderoos
(2016), for example, found that learners’ L1s were often present in their
minds in foreign language classes. The hypothesis in relation to research
question 2 was that, due to the deep-rooted monolingual bias in English
classes (as discussed above), teachers would still be unsure of the ways
in which they could support the use of native languages in the learning
process. In addition, previous research also suggests that teachers
have not received enough training, and thus lack the tools to support
immigrant children (Harju-Autti 2013; Pitkänen-Huhta and Mäntylä
2014). As for research question 3, there was no specific hypothesis, as the
teachers were expected to draw on their varying experiences to suggest
ways to support their immigrant learners.
Participants and The participants in the study consisted of 55 students (23 females and 32
methodology males) and 38 teachers (35 females and 3 males). It should be noted that
the student and teacher participants most probably did not come from
the same school. As explained below, the students came from a school in
southern Finland, whereas the teachers were recruited via Facebook and
could, therefore, reside anywhere in Finland. The students’ ages ranged
from 11 to 16. None of them had Finnish as their L1, although 43 of them
had been born in Finland to immigrant parents. The rest (12) had moved
to Finland as small children from Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Estonia, Iran,
Russia, Serbia, and Somalia. The linguistic backgrounds of the students
varied greatly, as they shared altogether 13 different L1s. Some of them
reported some other language, often Finnish, as their strongest, and many
used several languages at home and with friends on a daily basis.
The 38 teacher participants had varying amounts of English teaching
experience, from less than a year to 35 years. Most of them worked in
primary and middle school, three in upper secondary school, and two in

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 adult education. All of them had students of immigrant background in
their classrooms.
The data for the study were collected with two questionnaires, one
designed for students and one for teachers. Both were administered
online, with a survey tool called Webropol. The students answered the
questionnaire during their English classes using their personal iPads
which the school had provided them. The first author was present at the
time of the data collection. The school in question was a large school in
southern Finland, with a highly multicultural student population. In fact,
65 per cent of its students have an L1 other than Finnish.
The teacher questionnaire was administered by providing a link to it on
Facebook in two different groups where English teachers share ideas
and teaching materials. Both groups have over 2,000 members, so it was
possible to reach a large number of teachers from around the country.
Two of the teacher respondents came from the area where the study was
conducted, but it is not possible to know whether they were the teachers of
the student participants.
In addition to some demographic background questions, the student
questionnaire focused on the respondents’ attitudes and experiences
concerning their multilingualism. The questions in the teacher
questionnaire asked about the challenges and possible advantages that
students’ multilingual backgrounds may create in the classroom, in
particular whether the teachers used the multilingual backgrounds as
a resource in teaching. Only selected results of the questionnaires are
presented in the next section.

Results and Only results pertaining to the three research questions will be discussed
discussion here, starting with the student questionnaires (research question 1) and
ending with the teacher questionnaires (research questions 2 and 3).

Students The questions concerning the learning of English revealed rather positive
attitudes and experiences on the part of the students. When asked what
aspects of learning English the students found easy and what difficult
(question 12), a vast majority found studying all aspects of English
(speaking, writing, reading, understanding speech) very easy or quite
easy. As for using their L1 as an aid in learning English (question 16),
38 per cent of the students claimed not to have used it at all, but 46
per cent answered that they had used their L1 as a resource in learning
English vocabulary. Somewhat fewer had found their L1 useful in learning
pronunciation (24 per cent), grammar (22 per cent), and writing (18
per cent).
Thirty-seven (67 per cent) of the respondents had told their English
teacher what languages they knew (question 17), whereas 18 (33 per cent)
had not. In question 18, they were asked whether their English teachers
had asked them to perform tasks that included the use of their L1. Table 1
shows how the students answered that question.
As Table 1 illustrates, the majority of students felt that their teachers had
never asked them to perform these tasks using their L1s. This points to a
virtual non-existence of translanguaging practices. The use of the majority

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 Has your English teacher asked you to Often Sometimes Never
translate English words or sentences to your L1? 5 14 36
explain how sentences are built in your L1? 3 13 39
present your L1 to others? 3 14 38
compare the pronunciation of your L1 and English? 4 12 39

1
ta b l e
How often teachers ask
students to perform tasks
using their L1
language of the community, i.e. Finnish, seems to prevail in English
classes. This became quite clear with question 19, ‘Do you use Finnish in
your English classes?’: 37 (67 per cent) students answered ‘often’, 18 (33
per cent) ‘sometimes’, while none chose ‘never’. When asked whether they
understood the Finnish words in their English textbooks (question 20),
27 per cent of all students and 58 per cent of those who had immigrated
to Finland as young children replied ‘sometimes’ or ‘never’. This is an
important finding, as the students’ weak Finnish skills were mentioned by
the teachers as one of the biggest challenges in language classes.
All in all, the students seem to have managed relatively well in
their English studies even without their teacher engaging them in
translanguaging activities. Their L1s offer them some help, especially in
learning vocabulary.

Teachers The teachers were asked whether they had been trained to teach children
with multilingual backgrounds (question 7). The majority (66 per cent)
had not received any training in view of this learner group, while 34 per
cent had got some training either during their basic teacher education
(graduated in 2010 or later) or in in-service training (earlier graduates).
It is a positive sign that the need for this kind of training has been
acknowledged in faculties of education around Finland. When asked
whether they discussed teaching languages to students of immigrant
background with their colleagues (question 10), most of the teachers (79
per cent) reported doing so.
In question 11, the teachers were asked what challenges they had noticed
in the language learning process of students of immigrant background.
Almost all of the teachers (34 out of 38) felt that children of immigrant
background, when learning English, struggled with writing. Structures,
vocabulary, and reading comprehension were also chosen by quite a few.
Seven teachers chose the ‘other’ option. When asked to specify what they
meant, five of them mentioned that the students’ weak Finnish skills
created challenges. As was revealed by the students’ answers discussed
above, Finnish is used quite often in English classes. This is in accordance
with curricular guidelines (Finnish National Board of Education 2014),
which state that the language of the community can be used when dealing
with demanding issues such as certain grammatical phenomena, even
though the use of the target language is encouraged whenever possible.
Clearly, this does not help the immigrant learner whose Finnish skills
are weak.

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 In addition to challenges, the teachers were asked whether they had
noticed any advantages that multilingualism might bring to the English
class (question 12).
Pronunciation, vocabulary, and speaking were the three strongest areas
where teachers felt multilingualism helped learning English. Writing, on
the other hand, was selected by only three teachers, which supports the
results of the previous question where writing proved to be the biggest
challenge.
One of the key questions in the present study was whether the teachers
had utilized their students’ multilingual backgrounds as a resource
in their teaching (question 14), i.e. whether they were familiar with
translanguaging. As can be seen in Figure 1, comparing the vocabularies
of English and the students’ L1s was, according to the teachers, a common
strategy in the classroom.
In addition to comparing vocabularies, some teachers had compared
structures and pronunciation between the languages, presented the
students’ L1s to other students, or used the languages to present different
cultures. It is noteworthy that the student participants in this study had a
different experience in this issue: most of them had not had a chance to
use their L1 in English classes at all (see Table 1). This discrepancy can at
least partly be explained by the fact that the students and teachers were not
from the same school.
Six teachers had not used their students’ L1s in any way. When asked
whether they thought English textbooks and other learning materials took
students from different linguistic backgrounds into account (question 15),
the teachers were fairly unanimous: a vast majority (82 per cent) answered
no. According to them, exercises, tests, and glossaries were usually in
Finnish. This raises the question whether immigrant learners can be
treated fairly in testing situations if tests that are provided in teachers’
materials require a good knowledge of Finnish.

figure1
Using students’ linguistic
backgrounds in teaching
English

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 There was also an open question at the end of the teacher questionnaire
(question 16) in which the teachers were asked to reflect on how the
linguistic backgrounds of multilingual students could be taken into
account in foreign language teaching if there were no real-life limitations.
A variety of themes were suggested, but the most popular one was
comparison of different languages. Finding differences and similarities
between the target language and the student’s L1 was felt to be a good
strategy (cf. the PBCS and TOLC activities discussed above). According
to some teachers, this could be done as a student-led activity, similar to
one in which students could search for L1 equivalents of English words
discussed in class and compile an L1–English phrase list.
Other common themes included raising awareness of languages and
cultures and enhancing tolerance, or as one teacher put it (translated from
Finnish by the authors):
Getting to know a different language background and how this world
is interpreted and observed through it would give many students
epiphanies on the different ways that languages can be used.
Teachers suggested that students could present their home countries and
languages to others. However, some teachers pointed out that students
may have had traumatic experiences and may prefer not to talk about their
past. Several teachers also stated that children of immigrant background
were a very heterogeneous group, which is why it was difficult to
generalize about their English learning.

Conclusion The main purpose of the present study was to gain an understanding
of the current situation in Finnish schools concerning foreign language
learning by multilingual children. One part of the study consisted of
student perceptions of multilingualism and learning of English, while
the other part examined teacher perceptions of working with immigrant
children and supporting multilingual learners. The results showed that
children of immigrant background valued their multilingualism and were
able to use their L1s to benefit especially vocabulary learning. The teachers
faced many challenges in their work, such as the lack of shared language
and the students’ weak Finnish skills. They still seemed to teach foreign
languages mostly through Finnish, which challenges multilingual children
of immigrant background, as they have to learn a new foreign language
through their L2, Finnish, in which they are not always fluent. However,
teachers seemed to see multilingualism as an asset, and most of them had
developed translanguaging strategies that utilize multilingual students’
linguistic backgrounds. Similarly to the children in the study, the teachers
found vocabulary to benefit the most from the learners’ multilingualism.
The most prominent ideas for classroom practices that arose from the
teachers’ answers included comparison of languages (notably English
and the students’ L1s) to find differences and similarities, raising
awareness of different ways to express ideas and to see the world, and
engaging students in presentations and other activities involving their
own languages and cultures. In other words, translanguaging seems to
have found its way into the English class, as reported by the teachers in

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 the study. By engaging their students in translanguaging activities, they
subscribe to the holistic approach to language learning in which linguistic
diversity is seen as a richness and a resource.
The use of the community language, Finnish, turned out to cause
problems in the multilingual English classroom. Teachers would do well to
maintain the presence of all the various languages in classroom activities,
e.g. by having the students write words in three languages: English, the
language of the community, and their native languages. This would enable
the target words to be linked to the mother tongue and thus strengthen the
students’ vocabulary skills in both English and the community language.
All in all, the best solution would be not to rely exclusively on English (the
‘English only’ principle of much of ELT) or on the majority language, but
to let the students utilize all the languages they know.
It should be noted that the study reported in this article relied on only one
data collection instrument, a questionnaire, and a more comprehensive
picture of the situation in language classes in Finland would have been
acquired by complementing the questionnaire data with interviews, for
example. It is hoped that future studies on multilingual classrooms will
investigate the issue with multiple instruments and larger populations.
Final version received November 2017

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 Ortega, L. 2014. ‘Ways forward for a bi/multilingual The authors
turn in SLA’ in S. May (ed.). The Multilingual Turn. Veera Illman is a teacher of English and Swedish. She
Implications for SLA, TESOL and Bilingual Education. is currently working in a comprehensive school in
London: Routledge. Helsinki, Finland. Her MA degree, with English as
Pitkänen-Huhta, A. and K. Mäntylä. 2014. her major subject, is from the University of Turku
‘Maahanmuuttajat vieraan kielen oppijoina: (2017). Her research interests include foreign language
monikielisen oppilaan kielirepertuaarin learning and multilingualism, as well as teaching and
tunnistaminen ja hyödyntäminen vieraan kielen assessment of immigrant language learners.
oppitunnilla’ [Migrants as learners of a foreign Päivi Pietilä is Professor of English at the University of
language: identification and utilization of the Turku, Finland. She has published The English of Finnish
language repertoire of a multilingual student Americans (1989), L2 Speech (1999), Lexical Issues in
in a foreign language classroom] in M. Mutta, L2 Writing (2015, co-editor), in addition to a number
P. Lintunen, I. Ivaska and P. Peltonen (eds.). of journal articles. Her research interests include L2
Tulevaisuuden kielenkäyttäjä—Language Users of acquisition and attrition, vocabulary acquisition and use,
Tomorrow. AFinLA Yearbook 2014. Jyväskylä: Finnish and academic L2 writing and speaking.
Association of Applied Linguistics. Email: paivi.pietila@utu.fi

Appendix 1: extract The original questionnaire had 22 questions; only the ones discussed in
from student the article are included here.
questionnaire

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 Appendix 2: extract from The original questionnaire had 17 questions; only the ones discussed in
teacher questionnaire the article are included here.

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 16. If there were no real life limitations, how do you think the language
backgrounds of immigrant children could be utilized in foreign language
learning and teaching?

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