Abstract
This article originated in a creative attempt to engage audiences visually, on a poster, with ideas about language(s), teaching and learning which have been informing language education at university language centres. It was originally locally grounded and devised to take soundings with colleagues and with participants at the CercleS 2014 Conference hosted at the University of Fribourg. It uses a local campus building as a reflective canvas, as it were. Simultaneously, it deals with concepts of wider currency which may influence and engage language teachers’ awareness and practices in other tertiary contexts. The poster’s visual appeal not only contrasts with the linearity of academic writing but its open-endedness creates a space for exchange and discussion. It also creates a space for theory, which few practitioners will engage with of their own accord. The poster’s inherent dimension of interpretation by the viewer extends an invitation to respond. This article may render its content more tangible or accessible through verbal elaboration that complements the visual. The notions and cognitions discussed include reflection(s), languaging, a language formula, the Indo-European tree of languages, a multilingual linguistic sign, Douglas Adams’s Babel fish, the IPA vowel quadrilateral, a syntactic tree, and a pyramid of learning. Presenting this poster and article to a wider audience can be framed as a novel dialogue and dialectic about conceptualisations that are influential for university language teaching. It is also an unorthodox way of approaching theory didactically and with language teacher cognitions (Borg 2009) in mind, and a means of stimulating engagement with multilingualism.
About the author
Iris Schaller-Schwaner has been teaching English at university level for more than 20 years, mostly as an EFL lecturer at the University of Freiburg/Fribourg Language Centre and the Department of Languages and Literatures, Multilingualism & Foreign Language Education. Her current research focus is English as a lingua franca in multilingual academic contexts; she has also published on pedagogical grammar and English in Swiss billboard advertising.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Stefanie Neuner-Anfindsen, Acting Director of the Language Centre of the University of Fribourg, for commissioning this poster and providing the resources for its realisation, as well as for her comments on versions of the poster. Many thanks are due to Peter Sauter, Tisa Retfalvi-Schär, Anthony Clark, Ruedi Rohrbach, Barbla Etter, Jeannette Regan and Nikolaus Ritt for their hints or input. I am particularly grateful to Vinzenz Theodor Schaller for producing many versions of the formula in LaTeX and for the ideas he contributed to it. Sincere thanks are also due to the university’s graphic designer Daniel Wynistorf, through whose expertise the poster was realized. The responsibility for any errors is of course entirely mine.
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