Teaching and supporting languages of culturally and linguistically diverse students

Palaiologou Nektaria, Akriotou Despoina, Kassotaki Eirini, Kostoulas Achilles, Paida Sevi; Hellenic Open University, Language Education for Refugees and Migrants Programme, Greece

Abstract: Culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students have many needs; some of them are common with all the other students, some of them are different depending on their cultural background and origin. The LRM team designed an online questionnaire and 39 teachers (N) have participated so far. The participants teach foreign languages (including Greek) in the three educational levels (pre/primary, secondary and higher education) and in multilingual contexts. According to their responses, the majority believe that students’ linguistic background is useful when learning new languages and that teachers of different language subjects should collaborate closely. On the other hand, they are not convinced that either CLD students face challenges during their participation in the language courses or that CLD students have more difficulty than the other students in mastering the official language of instruction at schools, i.e. language of the reception country. On the other side, although they seem to be open to multilingual education and inclusion, to the presence of multilingual books and appropriate CLD teaching strategies, in practice teachers don’t use efficiently CLD students’ L1 and their previous knowledge during the teaching and learning process.