Language acquisition of children in multilingual families – an intersectional approach

 

Text equivalent of the podcast

Meg Sakilayan Latvala: Tervetuloa kuuntelemaan Kenen koti -podcastia. Sanotaan, että koti on siellä, missä sydän on. Koti on paitsi paikka, jossa asumme, myös paikka, jonne tunnemme kuuluvamme ja jossa on turvallista olla oma itsensä. Koti on jotakin pysyvää, omaa ja tärkeää.  

Sandra Hagman: Suomi on moninaistunut nopeasti 2000-luvulla. Vieraskielisten määrä on noin kaksinkertaistunut kymmenessä vuodessa. Kenen koti -podcastissa keskustelemme moninaistuvan yhteiskuntamme erilaisista ilmiöistä ammattilaisten ja asiantuntijoiden kanssa. Kysymme samalla, kenen koti Suomi oikein on 2020-luvulla. Pohdimme yhdessä keinoja siihen, miten kaikki Suomessa asuvat voisivat tuntea yhteiskunnan kodikseen. Minä olen sosiaalialan lehtori Sandra Hagman… 

Meg Sakilayan Latvala: Ja minä olen sosiaalialan lehtori Meg Sakilayan Latvala. 

Sandra Hagman: Olemme tuottaneet tämän podcastin osana Kenen koti? Keskusteluja moninaistuvasta yhteiskunnasta -julkaisua, joka on Diakonia-ammattikorkeakoulun monikulttuurisuuden asiantuntijan erikoistumiskoulutuksen juhlajulkaisu. Tervetuloa mukaan! 

[Music, speech in Finnish] 

Meg Sakilayan Latvala: Welcome to Kenen koti podcast. My name is Meg Sakilayan Latvala, and I am a senior lecturer at Diaconia University of Applied Sciences. In this podcast, we have invited Fon and Michelle to explore the intersectionality of the issues surrounding language acquisition of children in multilingual families and how these issues may impact identity development, thus reinforcing different forms of inequality. Von and Michelle, please introduce yourselves and I would like to welcome you once again to Kenen koti podcast. 

[Music] 

Fon Krairiksh: Hi, I’m Fon. I’m a PhD researcher in sociolinguistics at the University of Helsinki. Before we start on the actual topic, I’d like to state a bit of a disclaimer. Language acquisition, which we’re going to touch upon a little bit today, is not at all my area of research. Though of course, as a linguist I’ve studied the basics. Language acquisition, by the way, is fancy linguist talk for learning a language, so if I say that term, you know what that is. My research focuses on identity and belonging in particularly in a university setting. But we’re not here to discuss that today. Actually, today’s topic is the impact of negative stereotypes on language learning. What fascinates me about the topic we’re discussing, is not so much the mechanical aspects of language acquisition in children, but rather how much impact society and the formation of minority identities can have on language learning. So, with me today I have a guest who does the actual field work with language minorities in Espoo. Michelle, would you like to introduce yourself and the work that you do? 

Michelle Kaila: Sure. Thanks, Fon. And thanks very much for the invitation. It is a very important and interesting topic. So yeah, my name is Michelle Kaila and I’m come from Canada. I’ve been here for almost 20 years, and I’ve been working in Espoo city’s Moniku service over 5 years. I was hired to build up the service from a pilot project. We’re now three workers, Moniku councillors, in Espoo, and we cover the whole of Espoo. It is part of family social services, but we work together with the neuvola system. We meet with multilingual families who have babies under the age of one year. We support the families in helping them to support their children to learn their native language and, of course, we also offer service guidance. We try to lower the threshold for family support services such as perhetyö, which is family support work, and kotipalvelu which is home service work. Besides preventing the need for speech and multiprofessional therapy, one of the ideas in the creation of Moniku was to increase operational equality of services. Which is –as an immigrant– an idea you can really get behind. Basically, in the meetings, we talk about the importance of the native language, different methods that the parents can use in helping teach their native language to their children, the importance of cultural appreciation, cultural pride and how to support the native language when children start learning Finnish in day care or school, for example. We have a lot of materials translated into many languages which we use as tools. The service is based on psychoeducation. 

Fon Krairiksh: When you say native language, are you referring to the language spoken at home by either one or both parents? And as a follow up question to that—do you have families in your services too, who speak, for example, two or even more languages at home? 

Michelle Kaila: Yes, there’s a lot of different combinations and many kinds of families. For to be eligible for the service, the family, at least one of the parents, has to speak a language other than Finnish or Swedish. For example, you can have a Russian speaking mom and a Finnish speaking dad or both parents can speak another language like Sorani, Italian, Punjabi, German, or Spanish, for example. You name it. Many different combinations. 

Fon Krairiksh: Yeah. Actually, I want to talk about minority children and how they acquire language. This is really on topic. Many children with one minority parent and one Finnish or Swedish parent, typically Finnish parent —they figure out really quickly that their parent, the one who’s not Finn, is not able to understand Finnish quite well, and as a result a lot of children then decide to take the path of least resistance, so they simply respond in Finnish. Let’s say a mom is speaking to her child in Russian and then the child just simply responds in Finnish every time… Well, actually, Russian is a bad example because that’s a fairly large language minority in Finland, but let’s say the parent is from a much smaller language minority.  Let’s take a Swahili speaker —you know that parent is often a bit alone. It’s not that often that you catch up with other people belonging to the same language group —then you become the one person who is giving your child language exposure. You have a spouse who’s Finnish, so of course, you maybe speak Finnish with that spouse at home. The child figures out really quickly, like “OK I don’t need to use extra cognitive resources here to speak Swahili because my parent understands Finnish anyhow”. You need a lot of creative solutions to get around that. If I may, I’ll talk about one example. I heard it from a dear friend who coincidentally is married with a Swahili speaker, but this particular example was of a family who lived in Germany and were a Finnish and Swedish speaking family and they had this wonderful solution where they spoke –I think it was Swedish– at home and the children picked up German in society. I think they even went to an English language school. Then they spoke Finnish in the car, so the car was the Finnish zone. There were really clear rules, and this worked for this family. Of course, the more common thing to do is to have that “one parent, one language” policy, right? Do you advise that to people who come to you who are your clients or what do you think about that? 

Michelle Kaila: Yes, of course there can be different situations in different families that it’s not like 100% of “one person, one language”. But generally, that’s what we do recommend, the “one person, one language”. Of course, sometimes there’s a family that has… father speaks Finnish, and the mom speaks Swahili and another family language. For the mom and them, it’s important that the child would learn both Swahili and the family language. So, then we talk about different methods in which the parent and the mom can teach both languages in a way that they separate them, so there’s clarity that the child understands that these are two separate languages. We can talk about those things as well. But generally, the “one person, one language” for the reasons that you— Usually of course the native language is the strongest language and one of the reasons for delayed language development can be the mixing of languages, for example, either in the same sentence or one sentence after the other or sometimes speaking Finnish, sometimes speaking English, because the child actually associates the parents face with the language from the very beginning. The consistency is very important. 

Fon Krairiksh: Yeah, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve had a lot of— I haven’t mentioned my own sort of ethnic and linguistic background. I’m actually half Thai and half Finnish. I’ve lived in Finland for some time now, but I wasn’t here in my childhood, so I identify more as a Thai speaker and I’ve worked with the Thai community here. What I hear often actually is quite a lot of the women I used to work with— they would insist that they speak Thai to their kids, and they don’t speak Finnish —but then in practise what I see happening is they speak really complicated Thai to their kids, but then they practise the Finnish that they are learning themselves with their children, so the sort of easy stuff the children understand is actually being spoken to them in Finnish. I mean, it’s very human… we want to communicate, it’s what we do as a species. Someone has called us the communicating animal basically, and so it’s very easy for parents of course. It’s very human to give up at some stage and be like “oh, you know, my child understands, but they don’t speak”. I guess it’s not possible. What do you think? Do you encounter stuff like that? 

Michelle Kaila: Oh yeah, yes, quite often. And how important it is— I guess skipping forward, because, like you said, if somebody speaking complicated Thai and then easy Finnish, that’s a mixing of languages. The child can easily get confused, especially if it’s from the very beginning. Language system is being built in the brain—brain mapping is happening. Especially when the child is— they say from the third trimester until age 7, this programming is happening in the brain. There’s much, much more during childhood that neuroplasticity, so it is very easy to learn languages, but also this kind of mixed language, wrong mapping if you could say, can also happen. I just brought to my mind the identity, because one of the things we talk about with families and parents is that the native language is usually the emotional language. So, the parent is not only teaching the language, but they’re also giving the child the words and the vocabulary by which the child is able to express their emotions, their opinions, and how they feel. I had a very interesting conversation with the psychologist once. She was working with youth in mental health services, and she said that in Finland she stated one thing— the youth that come with the need for mental health support services… She saw it is very common that they don’t have the vocabulary necessary to express what they’re feeling. How important is for the whole development of the personality, but also in connexion with the identity, the culture, the family, the relationship with the parents and the grandparents, especially if the grandparents don’t speak another common language, such as English. 

Fon Krairiksh: A lot of this is based on this assumption of monolingual speakers. You have this idea of “one parent, one language” you did briefly mention, some parents who may have two languages, but a lot of this stuff is based on idea that speakers are monolingual and it’s only the next generation now who is becoming multilingual. You know, the reason that cuts deep for me is because I am— not even first generation, many humans have been multilingual for since the beginning of language, but I am a mother who has Thai –I speak Thai with my kids–, but my whole education has been in English. For me, English is my emotive language, but yet I want to speak Thai to my kids, and I know… I’m super aware of the fact that my children don’t have the vocabulary for emotion in Thai. I know what’s caused it, I’m very aware, but it’s just… Even though for me Thai isn’t emotional language, if that makes sense because I was raised with it as well, I’m also kind of multilingual emotionally, but for my kids I haven’t been able to convey that— for some of the reasons that we’ve listed. They speak quite fluently considering that they’ve been here almost all their lives. But, you know, there’s this idea that the parents typically come from one culture, and we’re raising bilinguals, but at some stage, when they become adults, especially with the Finnish model, they’re going to have to choose which mother tongue it is. 

Michelle Kaila: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even structurally, you can only choose one native language on the form. 

Fon Krairiksh: Yeah, exactly. That’s what I’m talking about. And it’s quite interesting. Speaking of, having to choose a language, etc., I also find it quite interesting. I still hear in many neuvolas, which are these first contact child and maternity clinics— they’re not linguists, and this isn’t their field, but they’re still giving this advice of “just speak your language to your child, don’t worry if they don’t answer, don’t worry if they don’t even want to speak it to you, or they respond in another language, sooner or later they’ll start speaking this language to you”. For example, Swahili, like we’ve used. This is I have to say one of my pet peeves because it’s not necessarily bad advice but it’s not good advice either, unless you’re a Finnish Swede. And the reason I say this is because— or maybe Finnish Russian or any kind of language minority where there’s a big community and access to media, it’s easy to use the language, you’re going to encounter people who don’t speak Finnish —that advice will probably work because at some stage the child will figure out that they’re going to have to use that language to get a message across. But it’s not going to work for that minority group where you know that Swahili speaker isn’t exposed to other people, or that child of the Swahili speaker is not exposed. You know, then the child is just simply learning that: “aha, I’m just going to produce Finnish”. How do you respond to that at work? How do you fix that? Actually, how do you get people out of a situation where a child is refusing to produce the language of the parent? 

Michelle Kaila: Yeah, this is a really good question because generally we like to meet first with parents whenever possible during the pregnancy time. This is before the child is born and there’s more headspace, there’s a lot less sleep deprivation, all these things. So, we talk about these things beforehand. If this is started earlier— you know, really the language development starts in the womb. I mean, if you really think about that the child hears the parent’s voices and it’s been said that children, when they’re born, they’re crying in their own accents. When they start to babble, they’re babbling in their own accents— so it starts from the very beginning. Of course, like we were discussing before, with the consistency. Moniku is a preventive work in many ways. One of the biggest points is that for the language… You can say that in order to prevent this situation that you’re describing, for example, that the child understands but doesn’t speak, earlier is better to prevent that from happening. This is what we talk about in the meetings. We give all the tools to when we talk about the importance of talking face to face when the baby is small, face to face, eye contact. Talking, singing; singing is a wonderful tool for the language development. We encourage parents to sing as much as possible. Reading, which can also be started from the very beginning. Reading; it is said that there was one of the statistics – children who were read to regularly, by the age of three they’ve heard 20 million more words than children in families that don’t read. The language system in this way and all these… We talk about story massage. It’s being built in the brain, the language system. Preventive that parents start early and consistently. Now that being said, sometimes we do occasionally meet with parents with children up to the age of six. For example, there could be a 3-year-old whose father speaks Finnish, and the mum speaks Russian. The child has been in the day care and the Finnish is a stronger language. The child understands Russian but doesn’t speak it. We have to talk about the same methods, but very, very gently, that child doesn’t get a feeling of pressure. Also, we learn best in a relaxed situation. We talk about play, play together, do a puzzle, these other things, like singing and reading, but a very relaxed way. When anybody is relaxed, adults too, we learn better. This kind of things… What I would really like is that the service would be in every city, available for everyone. In Vantaa, there’s now a Moniku service. It would be helpful for all multilingual families to have this support service from the very beginning. There’s a lot of people with their first child and maybe they haven’t really thought about it. For example, they’ve come here for work, and they decided to stay here. In their home country the child would have learned the language rather automatically as we do if we’re surrounded by a language. Here they haven’t really thought that “but oh”. You know, we’re surrounded with many languages, but mostly Finnish, there’s some Swedish, there’s some English, but the majority language is Finnish. The day care language is Finnish, the school language is Finnish, so how are we going to do this? This is where this kind of service comes in to give support for the families— and the earlier the better. 

Fon Krairiksh: It is really tough for those parents…  I think, you know, to bridge onto next topic here. Of course, no matter how good your language acquisition has been as a child, it’s very possible that as a teen, you go through a whole new process of reformation of identity and rejection of language. I’ve written about my own murky path in navigating identity, and how in my teenage years, I just rejected the Finnish language. Even though I was kind of good at it, but due to really adverse personal experiences, I decided that’s it, I’m not doing Finnish; I identify only as Thai and I’m just dropping this language. Do you see families who have reported cases like this, or is this going beyond the scope of your work already? 

Michelle Kaila: Not exact. I have encountered sometimes people who, for example, when they move to Finland, maybe they’ve come from a very difficult place, and they’ve just decided that they almost reject their native language because they just have come to a safer place, a better place, and they want to become completely finnished. The families that we meet with are usually… the children are smaller. Going back just for a second quickly to what we were talking before about the ways. If there’s an older child who understands but doesn’t speak, I have to say— after meeting thousands of families… I’ve seen through subsequent meetings as one to four times, for example, with the family over the course, during pregnancy to 10 months or one year, and in this kind of families that have had this situation, I’ve given different kinds of advice, talked about the methods of course that I mentioned. For example, if the family’s speaking— let’s say the mom is speaking 20% of her native language and the rest in English. I say “OK, you can do this for now, but keep it separated. Then try a little bit on your own pace, how you feel, maybe every week, every two weeks add 10% if you know your average”. Of course, you’re not going to be very mathematical about it, 20% then 30%, 40% until you get to 100% and this way it’s like a slow slide into this for the child. Not all of a sudden, the mum’s going from 20% to 100% because that would be disruptive for them. I’ve seen many, many successes with this and the other advice that by the time the children have been understanding and speaking more, enjoying it. There is this aspect of the neuroplasticity. They’re still kids, and even beyond childhood, we’re basically neuroplastic from birth until death. It’s just as children little bit easier. There is definitely a lot of hope in those situations if to be taken patient and take these different kind of simple methods. 

Fon Krairiksh: Yeah, that neural plasticity is quite interesting. There was a much debated theory in linguistics about the critical age of language acquisition and the model went more or less the younger you are, the easier it is to learn language. That’s pretty, you know, nobody’s going to argue with that really, but then there was some interesting evidence. A lot of people were researching this, and no one has really come to a full agreement over how this works, but at some stage a lot of research was coming in of children who were immigrants acquiring the local language. It was shown that generally if children start acquiring the local language by the age of seven, they reach native like proficiency as a general rule. Of course, it’s possible also later on, but it becomes less likely that they’re going to speak the local language like a local. But then what they were finding was that there were some outliers. There were children who were born in the setting of the local language, and still somehow never acquired native like proficiency, and there were very interesting cases of different teens. For example, some teens would arrive in a country around the age of 13–14 and become completely native and fluent in the local language, and then some where the teens outrightly just didn’t learn anything. So, of course, this talk of identity started creeping into discussion too. After the rebellious teenage years, what’s very interesting is that you also see… in some of the data… a peak of people learning languages very well when they’re around 18, 19, 20 years. It’s almost like the identity dust has settled down a little bit — and people decide what they want to be. You know, I can relate to that because that’s exactly what I did, so of course I’m a little bit biased here in my reading of the research as well, so take what I say with a with a grain of salt here. Is a child who feels like— whatever minority they belong to… is looked down upon. Do you think that child is going to be motivated to learn that language? 

Michelle Kaila: I think there is so many influences. Of course, there is from the peers and these stereotypes will leak through. They will find out about them at some point as they grow up. Of course, that could affect, but I think a big part of it has to come from home. That’s why we talk about cultural appreciation, how to build the cultural pride. When a child is also proud of the language, they want to speak it. If they have that— I guess you could say that inner strength, grown from when they’re very small— whatever is coming… Also, any kind of aspect of self-esteem, if it’s strong from the beginning, it could be a good shield or barrier from these things that will come in at any point. They’ll be bullying, they’ll be teasing. I’ve heard about also children who are teased because of speaking Finnish with an accent, which brings to mind this saying “never make fun of someone who speaks broken English because it means they know another language”. I think there should be more… I’m a little bit going outside of the question, but I think at home, it’s important— because these things will affect the child. Depending on the child, the nature is different. Every person is different, but then you need this… I don’t know if you’ve read some of Gabor Maté’s works. I really, really like his works. He’s talking about, for example, trauma. He said basically that the trauma, it happens in the life. For example, trauma in childhood or youth adulthood, if there is support, if there are people who are supporting, loving and caring through that trauma— the trauma doesn’t have the same effect. A trauma— is it the bullying, the teasing, the stereotypes, the microaggressions, all these things thrown at a person, can be from childhood. If that home, cultural appreciation, that sense of value from the parents, from the family as grown, and there should be more. Also, education for children in school beyond academics, more conversations promoting this cultural appreciation. Unfortunately, many stereotypes are still so prevalent. Education is needed. Ethics and religion classes by themselves don’t seem to be enough. I can share one short story— I have a friend who is working in a day care, and she is an immigrant. She had countered bullying from the children, making fun of her Finnish because it’s not completely fluent or she has an accent when she speaks—and she actually speaks very good Finnish. But she was being bullied. What I really liked in that day care, is that the workers— they sent emails to the parents telling what was happening and saying that there’s zero tolerance, to talk to their children, and if the child is doing this, that they will be sent home. I said this is the way that people learn. I mean, of course it’s not a nice way to learn. It’s not a nice way to learn. But it’s one of the ways that people learn zero tolerance for bullying, talking about it, saying this is not right, talk to your kids from the very beginning. Maybe also for parents to be aware that these things are happening. The conversation at home, the conversation in the school, not just a little paragraph in the ethics or religion class, not just for example, once a year to have a Diwali celebration, but something more… esikoulu age, so preschool age. Actually, what happened after, is that the children started talking to her. I guess the parents had talked to them and they started to be very nice. Imagine what a great learning from such a young age, and that’s something that… if this will go through the society, if kids are taught, educated, and encouraged— not just to tolerate, know how not to be racist, but also how to appreciate. This is a richness, this is amazing. 

Fon Krairiksh: Yeah. Those are definitely linked. There is a very clear connexion between making fun of someone for their non-Finnish sounding accent and xenophobia and racism. You wouldn’t be doing that, making fun of someone for their non-Finnish sounding accent, if you didn’t also have some idea in your head: this is somehow inferior or… you know, all of these ideas come from somewhere. You know, like the kids weren’t being exposed to discourse where it’s like… If you want a child who is “it’s so great, we have this person who speaks another language, I wish could actually learn that language too”. Then the discourse at home is going to have been something like “oh, it’s so awesome that we have all these people in Finland bringing all this diversity here and different ways of thinking, different languages, different ways of doing things…” People are often not aware even of the things that they say that perpetuate these images. It can be really unfortunate and small things… The classic “oh, I’m not a racist, but I don’t really trust people from this ethnicity because I was duped by one of them once” or something like that. Nowadays I’m sometimes really surprised that I hear stuff like that because it’s like, wait, come on, haven’t we had this conversation already? 

Michelle Kaila: Yeah, I don’t think everybody has had the conversation yet, unfortunately. 

Fon Krairiksh: I saw this lovely quote the other day. If your plant is not doing well or if the flowers are not blooming, you don’t fix the plant. You fix its environment. 

Michelle Kaila: Yes, exactly. Yes, yes. 

Fon Krairiksh: I really like that because it gives a good framework for thinking of how, for example, you do have hard statistics on how certain groups of immigrants commit more crimes of type X, and how certain groups of people perform worse at school, for instance, right? But then I think it’s good to frame the discussion that way instead. Well, they’re not doing well, what’s wrong with the environment? I think that works really well for the language learning as well. You know, I have a child who doesn’t under any circumstance want to speak the language of the parents. What is wrong with the surroundings? It’s not always because the parents haven’t given enough support. 

Michelle Kaila: No, no, definitely not. No, like you said, the child might be teased at school or made fun of… From a very early age, these stereotypes can come out. When my children were younger, the things they said— that kids are making fun of somebody’s religion. They’re making fun of somebody’s where they come from, that what they look like— it happens very early. So, of course, that’s going to affect also the child’s feeling of whether or not they want to appear as different in anyway. I love that quote that you said. It’s like if a plant is wilting, you don’t say… diagnose it like “I think it was with a wilting plant syndrome”. You fix the environment. 

Fon Krairiksh: [Laughing] Wilting plant syndrome… How do we talk about a society where we want people to maintain their language skills and speak all these languages? 

Michelle Kaila: We have to ask ourselves what kind of society do we want to live in? Do we want to live in? 

Fon Krairiksh We should be proud of this plural lingual, multilingual, multi-ethnic, you know multi-everything… society that we have because that diversity is a richness— Diversity is actually the norm. I don’t even know why we would be saying that it’s like a richness, when actually it just is. It has to do with identity, and it has to do a lot with how people just want to belong. I mean, a lot of our language is very heavily tied to how we see ourselves and how we want to identify. Do we want to come across as being a little foreign, for example, might have a lot to do, even though, there are some mechanics involved in being able to produce sounds as an adult. If you can’t hear the sounds anymore as you grow older, your brain discards stuff… information that it doesn’t need. You might actually not be able to hear and produce some sounds. But how hard you try to get as close as possible? This may be impacted a lot by how you want to identify and how you want to come across, right? Because of my somewhat traumatic experience with Finnish and the Finnish side of my identity growing up— I know that I really don’t try very hard to do harder R’s in Finnish, for example, and I’ll sometimes be lazy about my Finnish pronunciation. On the other hand, when it comes to Thai, even though I haven’t grown up in Thailand either… you know, I kind of grew up all over the world— but I make an extra effort, I think really hard about what I say in Thai and make sure that I’m not accidentally putting words in the wrong order or saying the wrong thing. I do my research and I’m not at all lazy about it… This has everything to do with identity. Let me start recapping a little bit—what we have talked about. I’m going to say the core message, that I really want for people to take home after listening to us ramble for an hour here, is that it is so important to not see language only as this thing to be taught. It’s not like maths. It’s a whole identity. It’s a whole societal thing. You know, we use it for communication. It has so much to do with societal attitudes and support. 

Michelle Kaila: About integration, it’s a little bit less like assimilation and more towards the two-way integration… This has a lot to do with… learning the language, getting a job, paying the taxes. There’s so much more also to integration. It begins very much with attitudes, how we welcome our new fellow Finns, and I think this is also ties in with all of the things we’ve been discussing. We have the power at every moment to examine our attitudes, examine our thoughts and to decide— is this the kind of attitude that I want? Is this the kind of thought which is correct to have? We have the power to do that. All tying in with all of these things… Yeah, I think that it’s… also very much an individual responsibility. We, as you know, workers also in my work— because nobody is ever culturally competent 100%. It’s a learning process all the time. That you know, for example, I’m meeting with people from many different countries, cultures, religious backgrounds also. There’s no way to, of course, know everything but how to approach a person respectfully with open heart and to learn… 

Fon Krairiksh: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Michelle Kaila: So that’s why it’s not possible to be culturally competent, because we’re constantly in a state of learning. If we want to be in that mind and heart frame, you can say. 

Fon Krairiksh: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, intercultural competencies change over time. I think that summarises it nicely. Actually, that idea of shifting competency in it… or actually the competency is in understanding the shift. I would put it that way. I think that ties up this whole thing nicely because it identities shift people. So, and hopefully with it, the societies that we live in will also grow to be more accommodating and respectful of linguistic diversity that we have. 

Michelle Kaila: Couldn’t have said it better. 

Fon Krairiksh: Well, I think that’s a wrap then.  

[Music begins] 

Meg Sakilayan Latvala: Thank you so much Fon and Michelle for the very interesting conversation. All forms of inequality are indeed mutually reinforcing and must therefore be analysed and addressed simultaneously to prevent one form of inequality from reinforcing another without an explicit intersectional approach, equality and anti-discrimination policies will tend to reproduce the discrimination patterns they seek to address, because processes of structural discrimination permit all areas of society, including the fields of education, and this is not only limited to language learning. Also, it affects anti-discrimination and social justice. I hope the conversation between Fon and Michelle in this podcast episode gave us the inspiration to be more intersectional when reflecting on issues concerning language acquisition and intersectional approach will ensure that no one is left behind in the fight for justice and equality. It will also present combating one form of discrimination at the expense of another and ensures that communities and movements are inclusive of differences and work together towards equality. Again, Fon and Michelle, thank you so much for joining us here at Kenen koti podcast. Thank you. 

[Music ends] 

Forget economic value – Successful language learning needs an anti-racist society – Here’s why