Call for papers 3/2026 - Using Students’ Other Languages in Language Teaching & Learning

2025-09-08

From the 1990s on, applied linguists have increasingly promoted bi/multilingual over monolingual approaches to language teaching (Hall & Cook, 2012). One reason is the “sociocultural turn” calling attention to the social, cultural, political, and ideological processes behind language acquisition, not merely its psycholinguistic processes (Douglas Fir Group, 2016; Johnson, 2006). The sociocultural turn gave rise to such constructs as multicompetence (Cook, 2013), plurilingualism (Piccardo, 2018), and translanguaging (Garcia & Wei, 2014), which highlight the ability of people to communicate effectively and appropriately drawing on resources from multiple languages (Canagarajah 2011; Horner et al., 2019)]. In addition, earlier constructs such as the Common Underlying Proficiency (Cummins, 1981) and languaging (Swain & Watanabe, 2012) illustrated that harnessing learners’ prior linguistic knowledge may help them to access prior schema and engage more readily in metalinguistic discussions (Swain et al., 2009), in general language courses as well as in content-based language instruction (Lin, 2016).

At the classroom level, however, teachers hold valid concerns about the use of other languages in teaching and learning. Would it become excessive to the point of holding back learning the target language? What about standardized assessments? What if the teacher does not speak (all) students’ languages, and what if students abuse the privilege of using their languages? What about languages not the whole class speaks? Would people feel comfortable displaying use of languages that are subject to discrimination if not outright hostility in society (Allard et al., 2023; Charalambous et al., 2016)? Even if educators are open to bi/multilingual language teaching, they may not feel confident in their ability to do it in a systematic and principled way.

This issue of Babylonia addresses these issues that language teachers grapple with daily. We invite contributions around the following questions:

Language acquisition

  1. To what extent do bi/multilingual pedagogical approaches to language teaching support additional language acquisition? What empirical evidence do we have showing the costs/benefits of monolingual/multilingual instruction?
  2. To what extent is bi/multilingual instruction essential in the early stages of learning a foreign or second language? To what extent do advanced L2/LX users continue to use their L1(s) in academic and professional work?

Language pedagogy

  1. How to deal with reduced exposure to the target language? To what extent is this due to the use of L1/LX? What is needed in terms of teachers’ language proficiency and didactic knowledge to remedy the lack of exposure?
  2. How can teachers apply pedagogical translanguaging/plurilingual pedagogies in a class where students speak different home languages and/or when teachers do not share students’ languages?
  3. Is there empirical evidence that pedagogical translanguaging/plurilingual pedagogies help students reach certain proficiency levels (prescribed by school curricula/educational policies)? For example, how do we use bi/multilingual activities to scaffold improved performance on standardized tests or criterion-based assessments?

Language rights and responsibilities

  1. How can teachers  establish and maintain an inclusive, non-judgmental classroom culture where all students—including L2/LX speakers, heritage speakers, or dialectal speakers—feel comfortable using their prior language knowledge to expand their language repertoires?
  2. What are some ways that teachers can take action against linguistic, cultural, religious, racial, or ethnic prejudices circulating in the school or wider community that affect students’ feelings of belonging and willingness to engage with school?
  3. To what extent is it useful to draw on regional, indigenous, and tribal languages in school settings as resources for learning? What potential roles can they play?

We are also open to other ideas.

Empirical contributions (research projects, action-research) as well as practical contributions (teaching materials, exercises, good practices) and stances on the topic (position papers, interviews, etc.) are welcome. Babylonia favours the use of clear and easily understandable language. Length of contribution: 16,000-20,000 characters, including spaces (4-5 pages). Cf. Submission Preparation Checklist.

Please send abstracts (max. 2,000 characters including spaces) in German, French, Italian, Romansh or English to annamend@illinois.edu and amelia.lambelet@hepl.ch by December 1, 2025.

Deadlines

  • Submission of abstracts: December 1, 2025
  • Notification of acceptance: January 2026
  • Submission of articles (max 16,000 characters including spaces, 4 pages, please see our website for more details): April 30, 2026
  • Feedback from the editorial team on the article, revisions
  • Sending of the final version: September 1, 2026
  • Copy-editing and layouting
  • Publication of the issue: December 2026