Keynote Speakers

Angel M. Y. Lin

Faculty of Education

Simon Fraser University (Canada)

Title of Talk:

From Deficit-based to Asset-based Models of Teaching: Dialogicality, Heteroglossia, Translanguaging and Trans-semiotizing in the Contact Zone

Abstract:

Education in our increasingly plurilingual and pluricultural societies needs to contribute to cultivating interculturally aware citizens who can engage in meaning making with diverse speakers/ interlocutors without holding prejudice against their linguistic, cultural, ethnic backgrounds or worldviews. Approaching teaching with this ideological clarity is one of the key tenets of asset-based pedagogies. English language teaching in various contexts (including EAP and content-based instruction contexts), however, often still operates with some covert (if not overt) ‘deficit models’ of the learner. In this presentation, the rich translanguaging and trans-semiotizing practices of plurilingual students are discussed to call for a shift from a deficit to an asset-based model of teaching. Some analytical resources are offered through drawing on theories of dialogicality, heteroglossia, translanguaging and trans-semiotizing.

Brief Bio:

Professor Angel Lin received her Ph.D. from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada in 1996. Since then her research and teaching have focused on classroom discourse analysis, bilingual and multilingual education, academic literacies and language policy and planning in postcolonial contexts. She has published 8 research books and over 100 research articles, and serves on the editorial boards of leading international research journals including Language and Education, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, and Pragmatics and Society. Her book, Language Across the Curriculum and CLIL in English-as-an-Additional-Language (EAL) Contexts, was published by Springer in 2016. In 2018, Professor Angel Lin moved from the University of Hong Kong to Simon Fraser University to take up the position of Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Plurilingual and Intercultural Education.

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