December 2026
8-12-2026 - 15:00 CEST/CET (Denmark)
Sunny Man Chu Lau, Geneviève Brisson, Danièle Moore, Magali Forte
Reading Plurilingual Texts: Promoting Children’s Critical Language Awareness through Engagement with Unfamiliar Languages
This talk describes findings from a plurilingual comprehension task that a Grade 6 class in Québec, Canada completed independently to establish a baseline understanding of existing language awareness and critical reading abilities (Lau et al., 2026). The task formed part of a larger project, informed by plurilingualism and critical literacies (Castellotti & Moore, 2010; Lau, 2019), which brings teachers of French and English as a second language (ESL) together to foster reciprocal language learning and deeper engagement with eco-social issues. We focus on critical moments (Wahlström & Schmidt, 2024) that capture key instances when students actively made sense of their wonderings about the story development and engaged with both familiar and unfamiliar languages (French, English, Spanish and Chinese) in a reconstructed plurilingual picturebook. The findings reveal students’ emerging abilities to work across languages, make sense of unfamiliar linguistic features, draw on reading strategies across linguistic and visual modes, and exercise critical judgement regarding the issues presented in the text. These early findings suggest that drawing on all students’ languages to engage them in plurilingual inquiry can strengthen critical language awareness and critical literacies. The study offers practical insights for teachers and highlights directions for further research.
References:
Castellotti, V., & Moore, D. (2010). Capitalising on, activating and developing plurilingual and pluricultural repertoires for better school integration. Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe
Lau, S. M. C. (2019). Convergences and alignments between translanguaging and critical literacies work in bilingual classrooms. Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 5(1), 67-85. https://doi.org/10.1075/ttmc.00025.lau
Lau, S. M. C., Brisson, G., Moore, D., & Forte, M. (2026). Reading plurilingual texts: children’s critical engagement with unfamiliar languages and eco-social issues. Language Awareness, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2026.2652330
Wahlström, N., & Schmidt, C. (2024). Considering critical moments, co-authoring and active engagement in learning. Educational Research, 66(3), 279-294. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2024.2367998
More About Dr. Lau
Dr. Sunny Lau, Full Professor at Bishop’s University in Quebec, is Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Integrated Plurilingual Teaching and Learning since 2021. She received the International Society for Language Studies’ Founders’ Emergent Scholars Award in 2012. Her research bridges university-school and theory-practice divides through collaborative action research on cross-language and cross-curricular teacher partnerships, examining how trans/plurilingual practices support knowledge-construction, metalinguistic and metacultural awareness, and critical literacies education. Dr. Lau co-edited Plurilingual pedagogies: Critical and Creative Endeavors for Equitable Language in Education (with Van Viegen, 2020) and Translanguaging in Action in English-Medium Classrooms (with Tian, 2026), both of which critically explore plurilingualism and translanguaging across educational settings. She is a former co-editor and current editorial board member for Critical Inquiry for Language Studies and serves on advisory and review boards for the Canadian Modern Language Review, TESOL Journal and Children’s Literature in English Language Education. Visit her website.
More About Dr. Brisson
Dr. Geneviève Brisson is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at the Université de Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada. Her research and teaching draw on sociomaterialism, new materialism, and postqualitative inquiry. Her scholarship examines plurilingualism in relation to literacy, identity, and language teaching and learning. She also studies children’s literature and its pedagogical applications across diverse educational settings. Her recent research explores how children’s literature can be used in classrooms to engage learners with social and ecological issues, fostering critical reflection and meaningful connections between literacy practices and contemporary challenges. Visit her website.
More About Dr. Moore
Danièle Moore est professeure à la Faculté d’Éducation de l’université Simon Fraser sur les territoires non-cédés des Nations xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, səlil̓wətaɬ et kʷikʷəƛ̓əm, en même temps que membre du DILTEC/LPI (Littératies, Plurilinguisme, Interculturalités) à l’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. Ses recherches en sociolinguistique éducative portent sur l’étude des plurilinguismes dans les sociétés, les migrations et diasporas, les politiques linguistiques, l’éducation plurilingue et la formation des enseignants. Ses travaux privilégient des approches collaboratives et participatives fondées sur des expériences sensibles et réflexives croisant biographies linguistiques et (auto)ethnographie poétique. Son dernier ouvrage, en collaboration avec Fred Dervin (Dervin & Moore, 2027) invite à repenser profondément la formation à l’interculturel des enseignants. Visit her website.
More About Dr. Forte
Dr. Magali Forte is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Sherbrooke (Canada). She holds a Ph.D. in education and has taught at both the elementary and secondary school levels for thirteen years. Her research adopts a decolonial and feminist stance and focuses on the identities of students and teachers in plurilingual contexts, as well as on multimodal and plurilingual literacy practices. As a researcher and as an educator, she is particularly interested in thinking with posthumanist, new materialist and deleuzoguattarian theories as well as Indigenous perspectives to create better and more socially just education systems. Visit her website.
