For teachers

For teaching materials see the pages by Anna Krulatz, Yaqiong  Xu, Danuta Gabrys-Barker,  Nair Ibrahim. You can also find lesson plans, ppts and materials for teachers  in the Blog

This is the time when teaching languages is bound to take into consideration the global transformations. The language practices of today are expressly multilingual and selected sets of languages, called Dominant Language Constellations are linguistic 'units of circulation'. Today, teaching English to speakers of other languages, teaching minority languages and teaching  through minority languages, developing awareness in languages  and planning language policies, involves  recognizing the role of  languages, both international ones and regional and minority ones, essential for particular localities. In order to implement a de facto multilingual paradigm, instead of only paying lip-service, it is necessary to reconsider language policies and modify curricula, teaching methods and activities in accordance with a multilingual perspective. Adopting the DLC perspective also means developing appropriate teaching activities, techniques and materials in order to naturally and efficiently integrate other students' languages into the acquisition of English as a second, foreign or additional language. As opposed to longstanding perception of the interaction between English and LOTE in a multilingual world as 'English against other languages', it is becoming increasingly clear now that the more realistic and fruitful way of dealing with multilingualism is 'English and other languages'.
In addition to more traditional verbal teaching methods, procedures and activities such as reading, writing and translation tasks, various visualization techniques including DLC maps, DLC images, tangible manual craft DLC representations and models are being intensively developed. These are beneficial for several reasons. Firstly, they serve as legitimate research tools for scholars of education and language teaching as well as language policy decision makers to monitor and analyse complex situations. Furthermore, they are of prime importance for all the TESOL and language teaching stakeholders in that pondering visual images and models enhances language awareness and language responsibility in learners and users of multiple languages. The educational effect of these DLC-related activities spills over purely linguistic concerns to the realm of social coherence, economics, intercultural communication and the personal self-efficacy and well-being. For this reason, more research and professional development of methods and materials are to be carried out in the future that involve not only English but also the DLC languages in their various manifestations: symbolic, verbal, material and digital. How exactly considering important languages in teaching multilingual learners is to be carried out in each particular setting is a matter of current and also near-future research and ongoing educational creative practices and initiatives. The DLC approach for language teaching is gaining momentum, but it is only at the beginning of its exciting path of innovations.

DLC in English-Teaching Practices 
With language policies and language teaching approaches of TESOL moving toward a multilingual paradigm, the task of reconsidering the strategies in teaching English to speakers of other languages becomes more realistic. A teacher can employ various DLC-oriented practices in the classroom.
 Curricula, Lesson Plans, and Teaching Materials 
Considering DLC (in broader understanding, multilingualism) in English teaching means that curricula, lessons, and teaching methods reflect the languages of students’ dominant constellations. This does not imply sporadic and superficial reference to all the languages every minute and day; rather the consideration should be systematic, naturally inbuilt in the tissue of daily life and teaching. For instance, one such learning activity is modifying the lesson template, so that it would incorporate the entire DLC rather than only the native language and English Such a formal reminder of languages additional to the target English together in one framework helps to address practical issues, and in that it delineates and brings out the entire set of important languages. Having all the DLC languages systematically in the teachers’ attention zone aligns their professional thinking along the current sociolinguistic reality, where the languages are intermixed in social spaces and multilingual skills work in concert. Such a systemic modification of teaching arrangements makes teachers and planners always remember and focus on interactions and interrelations of languages implicated in teaching English.

Teaching and Learning Activities: Creative Tasks, Visualizations, and Modeling 
One more way of addressing multilingualism while teaching English to speakers of other languages is organizing activities directed at enhancing their awareness of languages globally and in their personal life. Their understanding should not be limited to just “knowing about” other languages and eating each other’s ethnic food. The  language learners are entitled to a deeper and more active realization of the profound and crucial involvement of languages in contemporary life. Teachers  are those who can enable learners to competently manage their language assets through DLC. An inspiring example is how Sugrañes (2021) applied the DLC approach in the English language classroom in a primary school in Barcelona, where Spanish, Catalan, and English are the curricula languages. The plurilingual pedagogical strategy of the school is based on promoting translanguaging and using other languages of the pupils for metalinguistic reflection and learning. In order to bring  forth the pupil’s DLCs, various activities are used, including story reading, illustrating their stories, and “reading in English, speaking in our own languages.” The pupils created story books in English which were then translated into the pupils’ own languages and read by them to the younger children in English and in all the languages of the class. Using translation and variously engaging multilingual pupils’ own languages for learning, English did not inhibit their learning outcomes in any of the DLC languages, but proved to be beneficial for learning, motivation, and attitudes toward languages. In addition, Sugrañes’ study demonstrated a positive impact of the DLC approach on the teachers’ performance and their willingness and competencies to “act plurilingually.” One can also think of classroom activities beyond the English lesson such as discussions and disputes, writings and crafts that would induce students to interact, think, and compare.
 Visualizations have become widespread tools in education in pedagogy. Researchers resort to visual methods of social representations of multilingualism and DLCs as thoughts and feelings are not always easily expressed verbally. Melo-Pfeifer (2021) analysis visual linguistic autobiographies of foreign language student-teachers at Hamburg University and highlights the intricate, dynamic, and unpredictable evolution of an individual DLC. On the basis of her study, she suggested distinguishing between the latent and actual DLC which has implications for the educational language policy in Germany and internationally. Visualizations in teaching English to speakers of other languages are instrumental in rendering supposedly multilingual but in reality monolingual teaching into a de facto multilingual approach. DLC maps (Fig. 1a–c) are not the only visualization options any more. Modeling and manual craft representations of DLC are additional expressive means of bringing home the idea of multilingual reality to both learners and teachers of English. While for the learners, DLC models serve both as a cognitive extension and a material symbol of one’s own sociolinguistic existence and the language skills that ensure this existence, for language teaching specialists models provide insight both into the profession and into their own identity (see e.g., Gísladóttir, 2021). The simplest handmade models of personal DLCs can be easily produced by the language learners themselves, from playdough of different colors and sticks. Spheres of different colors represent languages; the bigger a sphere’s size, the higher the proficiency. The linguistic distance is defined by multilinguals since educators seek to unfold the subjective feelings of a language user and learner regarding their own language unit in the activity of DLC modeling. The greater the linguistic distance between languages, the longer the strips connecting the spheres. Handmade models  prove especially beneficial for awareness and emotional involvement. Creating models and tangible representations of DLC involves not only mental energy but also physical activity by hands; and the impact of such complex activity is more pronounced.