Multilinguality, Multimodality, and

Multicompetence: Code- and

Modeswitching by Minority Ethnic
Children in Complementary Schools
LI WEI
University of London, Birkbeck College
Department of Applied Linguistics &
Communication
30 Russell Square, Bloomsbury
London WC1B 5DT, United Kingdom
Email: li.wei@bbk.ac.uk

This article examines the multilingual and multimodal practices of British Chinese children in
complementary school classes from a multicompetence perspective. Using classroom interac-
tion data from a number of Chinese complementary schools in 3 different cities in England,
the article argues that the multicompetence perspective enables a holistic look at codeswitch-
ing and modeswitching by multilingual children of minority ethnic background and helps to
highlight creativity and criticality2 important and closely related concepts that have hitherto
been underexplored in multilingualism research.

THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES THE MULTILIN-
GUAL practices of minority ethnic children of im-
migrant parentage in the complementary school
context. By multilingual practices, I mean be-
haviours that involve the use of different linguis-
tic systems. These include choice of specific lan-
guages, switching between languages, mixing and
temporary borrowing of elements from languages
that are not part of the speakers normal lin-
guistic repertoire, imitating other speakers ac-
cents or style, as well as switching among speech,
writing, and signing. Some of these practices
have been termed crossing (Rampton, 1995)
or translanguaging (Creese & Blackledge, 2010;
Garca, 2009; Williams, 1996). I have used the
term translanguaging in a rather different sense
elsewhere (Li Wei, 2011). To avoid confusion, I
will use the traditional term codeswitching as a
convenient umbrella term in the present article
to cover various kinds of multilingual practices,
The Modern Language Journal, 95, iii, (2011)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01209.x
0026-7902/11/370384 $1.50/0

C 2011 The Modern Language Journal
although I would prefer to use the term translan-
guaging in principle. Codeswitching also seems
a convenient term for switching between speak-
ing and writing modes, which is the case in the
present article. Such switching is part of the mul-
timodality communication in which all of us are
routinely engaged, but it has received relatively
little attention in codeswitching and multilingual-
ism research generally.
Although codeswitching practices are common
for the multilingual language users themselves,
there is a widespread perception that such be-
haviours are out of the ordinary, abnormal, or
deviant. Baetens Beardsmore (2003) talked about
the fears of bilingualismparental (What have I
done to my child?), cultural (Will bilingualism
lead to cultural alienation?), educational (Does
bilingualism hinder academic progress?), and
politico-ideological (Is bilingualism a threat to
society and the nation-state?). Many, if not all,
of these fears are for the kind of multilingual
codeswitching practices I have described here.
There is a pervasive belief in society, bilingual
or monolingual alike, that languages are best to
be kept separate, discreet, and pure; mixing and
Li Wei
switching between languages are seen as interfer-
ence or trespassing, which would have a detrimen-
tal effect on both individual language users and
the communities in which they live. This is part
of the One Language Only (OLON) or One Lan-
guage at a Time (OLAT) ideology that I have dis-
cussed elsewhere (e.g., Li Wei & Wu, 2009).
In this article, I will approach multilingual
practices of young children of minority ethnic
background from a multicompetence perspec-
tive (e.g., Cook, 1991). As fearful and nega-
tive attitudes toward codeswitching still exist and
are particularly strong regarding minority ethnic
children, some of whom may simultaneously be
socially and educationally disadvantaged, a the-
oretical perspective that emphasizes the positive
and competent aspects of the multilingual prac-
tice is needed. The concept of multicompetence
aims to capture the knowledge of the multilingual
language user in a holistic way by accounting for
all of the languages he or she knows, as well as
knowledge of the norms for using the languages
in context and of how the different languages
may interact in producing well-formed, contex-
tually appropriate mixed-code utterances. I will
argue that multilingual and multimodal practices
of the kind that I am studying in this article pro-
vide good evidence of multicompetence, which,
in turn, provides a good theoretical perspective
on the practices of children of minority ethnic
backgrounds.
The multilingual language user group I am fo-
cusing on in the present study is British Chinese
children, who form one of the largest groups of
minority ethnic children of immigrant parents
in the United Kingdom. Despite the tremendous
progress in British society in terms of social at-
titudes toward minority ethnic communities in
the last 20 years, public perception of minority
ethnic children, especially those who speak lan-
guages other than English at home, is that of
problems. Their multilinguality often seems to be
a contributing factor; that is, the childrens ap-
parent underachievement or the socioeconomic
disadvantage they are experiencing has been at-
tributed to the fact that they do not speak English
only or all the time. Even those minority ethnic
children who are judged to be successful at school
are often perceived to be lacking in creativity and
criticality; they are seen as hardworking but pas-
sive learners. I aim to demonstrate in this article
that the multicompetence approach can help to
reveal these childrens creativity and criticality as
shown through their multilingual and multimodal
practices.
371
The specific context that I am studying is that of
complementary schools, a voluntary organisation
by minority ethnic, usually immigrant, communi-
ties in Britain for their childrens generations to
learn and use the ethnic languages. They are simi-
lar to the heritage language schools in the United
States and the community language schools in
Australia and elsewhere. A particular focus of the
complementary schools is on the teaching of lit-
eracy in the ethnic languages. I have discussed
elsewhere the history and current state of comple-
mentary schools in Britain (Li Wei, 2006). It has
been suggested that the complementary schools
provide a reassuring environment or safe space
(Li Wei & Wu, 2009; Martin, Bhatt, Bhojani, &
Creese, 2004, 2006) for multilingual practices and
the expression of multicompetence, a space that is
generally lacking in other domains of the contem-
porary British society. However, as we will see later
in the article, it is the minority ethnic children
themselves who create this safe space through
their multilingual practices. In other words, the
complementary schools are not institutionally safe
spaces but are made safe interactionally by the
multilingual language users (cf. Li Wei, 2011).
The structure of the article is as follows. I will be-
gin with a discussion of the public discourse on mi-
nority ethnic communities and their children in
the United Kingdom. I will then outline the com-
plementary school context. The concept of multi-
competence will be discussed with particular ref-
erence to multilingual and multimodal practices.
The main body of the article is devoted to an analy-
sis of examples of codeswitching and modeswitch-
ing by the multilingual British Chinese children
in complementary classes. Theoretical and prac-
tical implications of the study will be discussed in
the concluding section of the article.
PUBLIC DISCOURSE ON MINORITY ETHNIC
COMMUNITIES AND THEIR CHILDREN IN
THE UNITED KINGDOM
Even a cursory look at the public discourse
on minority ethnic communities in the United
Kingdom, as exemplified in newspapers and
television and radio programmes, reveals three
contradictory viewscrisis, neglect, and celebra-
tion. These views are often associated with dif-
ferent groups of minority ethnic communities
and their children. For example, the UK govern-
ment publishes school pupils annual examina-
tion results. Roughly 40% of all secondary school
pupils achieve five good GCSE-level (General Cer-
tificate of Secondary Education) qualifications,
372
including English and maths, at the age of 16.
However, whereas the Chinese and Indian pupils
consistently outperform everyone else at 60% and
over 50%, respectively, achieving five good GC-
SEs, Pakistani and Bangladeshi youngsters usu-
ally achieve around 30%. For the black pupils,
the overall figure is around 26%, with those from
black Caribbean backgrounds at just over 20%
(see Smith, 2005, for a detailed analysis). Every
year, when such figures are released, there is an
outcry in the media about the black and Asian
childrens apparent underachievement. Some at-
tack the government and the schools for letting
the minority ethnic children down; others claim
that school underachievement of minority ethnic
children is a result of the ideology of multicultur-
alism. Some commentators link the poor school
exam results with other social problems (e.g., gun
and knife crimes, drugs, and theft). Yet, as far as
the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities are
concerned, no official statistics ever show any con-
nection between these groups and the cited so-
cial problems. In the meantime, politicians try to
use the Chinese and Indian communities, espe-
cially their children, as examples of success stories,
but they often stereotype them as hardworking,
highly aspirational, and self-sufficient; they tend
not to ask for government support, mind their
own business, and generally do not cause trouble
to other people. However, behind this seemingly
positive talk is a tendency to neglect the needs
of these communities; they are left to their own
devices. Support programmes that the national
and local governments as well as charities organ-
ise and provide do not usually target these groups.
There is a tendency in British society that minor-
ity groups are neglected unless a major problem
is perceived.
Similar to the success stories about the Indian
and Chinese children in Britain is the celebratory
discourse surrounding ethnic and cultural diver-
sity. Difference is sometimes seen as a good thing
by definition, without consideration for its impli-
cations. In fact, globalisation has brought with it
significant changes not only to mainstream soci-
ety but also to minority ethnic communities. Com-
munities with historical roots and contemporary
connections with other nations, societies, and cul-
tures are experiencing tremendous social changes
in the postmodern era. The public celebration of
diversity often ignores such changes within the
minority communities. A key effect of the cele-
bratory discourse is that it reenforces differences
between ethnic and cultural groups. As a result,
minority ethnic communities and their children
cannot be accepted as normal British.
The Modern Language Journal 95 (2011)
The multilinguality of the minority ethnic com-
munities and their children seems to be a key con-
tributing factor to the complex stigma associated
with them, which goes from one extreme of low-
achieving, problematic youth gangs congregating
in deprived urban centres at one end, to hard-
working, well-behaved children aiming for con-
ventionally safe professions at the other. Their ap-
parent inability to manage their linguistic reper-
toire by using only English creates communica-
tion barriers with mainstream society and gives
rise to a semilingual state of mind (i.e., defi-
cient knowledge of any language). In September
2002, the then Home Secretary of the British
government, David Blunkett, talked in a pub-
lic speech about the schizophrenia bedeviling
minority ethnic communities that, according to
him, was caused by their not speaking English
at home. More ironic is the general perception
that the multilingual practices exemplified in the
minority ethnic childrens everyday social interac-
tion are a sign of a lack of creativity and critical-
ity; they are seen to accept whatever comes their
way, seldom challenge anything, or are unable to
raise questions and produce coherent and origi-
nal thoughts.
I will show in this article that by looking at
minority ethnic childrens multilingual and mul-
timodal practices from a multicompetence per-
spective, one can reveal clear and strong evidence
of creativity and criticality. Rather than deficient
in any way in their linguistic knowledge, these
children are highly capable of fully utilising the
multilingual resources they have, challenging the
status quo, and expressing their views systemati-
cally and insightfully. However, given the stigma
that we have just talked about, the expression of
the childrens multicompetence does require a
special space, which seems to be provided in the
complementary schools.
THE COMPLEMENTARY SCHOOLS
MOVEMENT FOR MINORITY ETHNIC AND
LINGUISTIC CHILDREN
Complementary schools have been a major so-
ciopolitical and educational movement in Britain
since the 1950s. Initially they were formed by
the black community as a means of tackling racism
toward, and underachievement among, black chil-
dren. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Muslim com-
munities set up a number of faith schools, es-
pecially for girls. Some of these schools later
received governmental recognition along with
other faith schools. However, the vast majority
of complementary schools in todays Britain are
Li Wei
cultural and language schools and usually run
outside the hours of mainstream schools (i.e.,
on weekends). There are over 2,000 such schools
according to the national resource centre Con-
tinYous register (http://www.continyou.org.uk).
However, such figures are likely to be an underesti-
mate, as these schools are voluntary organisations
and many are very small and informal. They may
be based in a private home or a community cen-
tre, which may not have adequate insurance cov-
erage or fully meet the current requirements of
health and safety legislations. Most of the teachers
are parents or professionals who are keen to help
their own communities. Many of them have teach-
ing experience, but they may not hold a teaching
qualification from the United Kingdom.
Complementary schools have attracted a cer-
tain amount of public debate vis-`a-vis the defini-
tion of schooling, governments involvement in
educational management, and alternative peda-
gogical practices. However, on the whole, there
is a lack of awareness of complementary schools
by mainstream schoolteachers and the general
public. Many mainstream teachers are not aware
that a significant number of their pupils also at-
tend complementary schools on weekends; nor do
they know what is being taught and how in these
schools. For their part, complementary schools do
not usually attempt to interact with other educa-
tional institutions. This includes complementary
schools of other minority ethnic communities. So
a teacher at a Turkish complementary school in
the northeast of London may not have spoken to a
Gujarati school or a Chinese schoolteacher in the
same area. They tend to operate entirely within
their own communities.
Whilst the establishment of the complementary
schools is sometimes seen as a challenge to the
dominant ideology of uniculturalism in Britain,
the ideology of the complementary schools them-
selves is rarely questioned. For instance, most
complementary schools have an implicit OLON
or OLAT policy, usually the minority ethnic lan-
guage of course. I have raised the question else-
where (Li Wei & Wu, 2008, 2009) about the im-
plications of such policies. To me, OLON and
OLAT policies are another form of the mono-
lingual ideology. Although it is understandable
that the complementary schools want to insist on
using specific community languages in this partic-
ular domain, the long-term consequence of the
compartmentalisation of community languages is
an issue of concern. In any case, maintaining a
strict no English policy in the complementary
schools is almost impossible due to the frequent
and habitual codeswitching by both the teachers
and the pupils. Martin et al. (2004) and Creese,
373
Bhatt, Bhojani, and Martin (2006), in a series of
articles on complementary schools in Leicester in
the English Midlands, documented in some detail
the extent of multilingual practices in this partic-
ular context. We will see later in this article ex-
amples of multilingual practices in the Chinese
complementary schools.
Most complementary schools in the United
Kingdom have literacy teaching as their key objec-
tive, as there is a widespread perception that the
British-born generations of minority ethnic chil-
dren have lost the ability to read and write in the
ethnic languages. Block (2008) questioned the
metaphor of loss that often occurs in the discourse
surrounding children of immigrant parents. How
can a community grieve over the loss of a lan-
guage in the younger generation when it is never
fully acquired? It seems almost like a victim men-
tality, blaming what may well be a change that has
happened more or less naturally on human and
environmental factors. Yet, this is a much more
complex issue than it looks. As Francis, Archer,
and Mau (2009) pointed out, there is a tendency
in immigrant communities to treat their ethnic
language not as a live issue in everyday life but
as heritage, a cultural relic that can be learned
about and memorialised. It certainly seems to be
the dominant discourse among many community
members, including parents and teachers. How-
ever, as we will see later in the present article,
the children often contest this notion of culture
linked to some remote past and negotiate a more
complex one focusing on a here-and-now artic-
ulation of culture. Minority ethnic communities
themselves also need to accept that their children
are no longer monolinguals. Their linguistic iden-
tity is different from that of their parents as well
as that of other children in society.
MULTILINGUAL PRACTICES FROM A
MULTICOMPETENCE PERSPECTIVE
I have found that a more positive, as well as
a more productive, way to look at multilingual
practices of minority ethnic children is to see
them from a multicompetence perspective. Multi-
competence is a theoretical concept developed by
Cook (1991, 1992, 2007, 2009) in the context of
second-language (L2) learning to reflect the total-
ity of linguistic knowledge in one mind. It starts
from the point that the mind of the L2 user is
different from that of the monolingual speaker
and aims to capture the L2 users state of the
mind by investigating how he or she puts to use
knowledge of more than one language and how
the different linguistic systems interact and im-
pact on the language users mind. The concept is
374
sometimes mistakenly described as multilingual
competence, but it goes way beyond the ability
to use multiple languages. In addition to the spe-
cific contributions the multicompetence concept
has made to second language acquisition, it in-
vites a reevaluation of the native-speaker norm
that still dominates many studies of bilingualism
and multilingualism. It also enables us to focus
more on the linguistic and conceptual link in the
multilingual language users mind.
The notion of multicompetence is particularly
useful in describing and understanding multilin-
gual practices such as codeswitching. As a distinc-
tive and defining feature of being bilingual or
multilingual, codeswitching requires knowledge
and competence in all the languages involved,
plus the involvement of higher level executive sys-
tems to manage across the languages, as ample
research evidence has confirmed. Furthermore,
codeswitching is not simply a combination and
mixture of two languages but creative strategies by
the language user. A multicompetence approach
enables us to investigate the structural, cogni-
tive, and sociocultural dimensions of codeswitch-
ing in an integrated and holistic way. It also has
the added value of revealing the multilingual lan-
guage users creativity and criticality that mani-
fest in their multilingual practices. Creativity here
refers to the ability to choose between following
and flouting the rules and norms of behaviour,
including the use of language, and to push and
break boundaries between the old and the new,
the conventional and the original, and the ac-
ceptable and the challenging (see also Li Wei &
Wu, 2009). An important prerequisite for linguis-
tic creativity is knowledge of the linguistic system.
For the multilingual, it is crucial to consider that
knowledge in a holistic way, not just one of the lan-
guages in the multilingual language users linguis-
tic repertoire, which would be only a subsystem for
the user. A holistic conceptualization of the knowl-
edge of the multilingual language user would
need to account for all the languages he or she
knows as well as knowledge of the norms for use of
the languages in context and of how the different
languages may interact in producing well-formed,
contextually appropriate mixed-code utterances.
The knowledge of appropriate use of multilin-
gual resources in context also provides the foun-
dation for criticalitythe ability to use evidence
appropriately, systematically, and insightfully to
inform considered views of cultural, social, and
linguistic phenomena, to question and problema-
tize received wisdom, and to express views ade-
quately through reasoned responses to situations.
The two conceptscreativity and criticalityare
intrinsically linked: One cannot push or break
The Modern Language Journal 95 (2011)
boundaries (i.e., being creative, without being
critical) and the best expression of ones criticality
is ones creativity (see Li Wei, 2011). I will explore
these concepts further with data from the Chinese
complementary schools. I will show how British
Chinese pupils in complementary schools use
codeswitching and modeswitching as a symbolic
and creative resource in a supposedly Chinese-
only environment.
By focusing on the creativity and criticality of
the multilingual language user, our take on multi-
competence embraces the notion of symbolic com-
petence, as developed by Kramsch and her asso-
ciates (e.g., Kramsch, 2006; Kramsch & Whiteside,
2008). Kramsch and Whiteside (2008) pointed
out:
Social actors in multilingual settings seem to activate
more than a communicative competence that would
enable them to communicate accurately, effectively,
and appropriately with one another. They seem to
display a particularly acute ability to play with vari-
ous linguistic codes and with the various spatial and
temporal resonances of these codes. We call this com-
petence symbolic competence. (p. 664)
Symbolic competence is defined as the ability not
only to approximate or appropriate for oneself
someone elses language, but to shape the very
context in which the language is learned and
used (Kramsch & Whiteside, 2008, p. 664). Ex-
tending Bourdieus notion of sens pratique, which
is exercised by a habitus that structures the very
field it is structured by in a quest for symbolic sur-
vival (Bourdieu, 1997/2000), Kramsch and White-
side (2008) argue that a multilingual sens pra-
tique multiplies the possibilities of meaning of-
fered by the various codes in presence. As they
suggested:
In todays global and migratory world, distinction
might not come so much from the ownership of one
social or linguistic patrimony (e.g., Mexican or Chi-
nese culture, English language) as much as it comes
from the ability to play a game of distinction on the
margins of established patrimonies. (p. 664)
MULTILINGUAL PRACTICES OF THE
BRITISH CHINESE CHILDREN IN
COMPLEMENTARY SCHOOLS
The present study takes the British Chinese chil-
dren as an example. The current Chinese commu-
nity in the United Kingdom is developed from
post-war migrants, who began to arrive in the
country in the 1950s. The vast majority of post-war
Chinese immigrants were from Hong Kong. They
were Cantonese and/or Hakka speakers. Many
of them were peasants and labourers, who left
an urbanising Hong Kong to seek a better living
Li Wei
in Britain. They tend to be engaged in largely
family-based catering businesses and other ser-
vice industries. Later cohorts of Chinese immi-
grants had a more mixed background, some with
good education and professional qualifications.
They gradually built a community structure, pro-
viding services not only in catering but also health
care, travel, finance and insurance, and legal
advice. The Chinese now form the third largest
immigrant community in Britain, after those of
Afro-Caribbean origin and from the Indian sub-
continent. Over a quarter of them are now British-
born. A more detailed account of the current
sociolinguistic situation of the Chinese commu-
nity in the United Kingdom can be found in
Li Wei (2007).
There were informal reports of home school-
ing, that is, children being taught by their parents
and others at home, among the Chinese fam-
ilies in the 1950s and 1960s in cities such as
London, Liverpool, and Manchester where there
were significant numbers of Chinese residents
(You, 2006). The very first Chinese schools
emerged on the basis of such collectives of families
providing private education to their children. The
reasons for the emergence of such schools were
complex. There is no doubt that racial discrimina-
tion played a role, but the fact that the vast major-
ity of the Chinese were, and still are, engaged in
service industries has led to scattered settlements
right across the country. It is often said that any
town or village in Britain with around 2,000 or
more residents will have at least one family-run
Chinese takeaway. The Chinese children of these
families would have little or no contact with other
Chinese children if there were no Chinese com-
plementary school.
The establishment of the Chinese schools
must be seen as a major achievement of the
community in their determination to support
themselves. According to the UK Federation of
Chinese Schools and the UK Association for the
Promotion of Chinese Education, the two largest
national organisations for Chinese complemen-
tary schools, there are over 200 such schools
in the United Kingdom (http://www.ukfcs.info/
and http://www.ukapce.org.uk/). They are lo-
cated in major urban centres. Many families have
to travel for hours to send their children to the
schools. They receive little support from the lo-
cal education authorities. They are almost entirely
self-financed. Parents pay fees to send their chil-
dren, and local Chinese businesses offer sponsor-
ships and other support (e.g., paying for the hire
of premises and facilities). Many of the schools
use teaching materials provided free of charge
375
by voluntary organisations and other agencies in
mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The
teachers are mainly enthusiastic Chinese parents
and university students.
In the last decade or so, a pattern has emerged.
There are now four types of Chinese schools:
(a) for Cantonese-speaking children from Hong
Kong immigrant families; (b) for Cantonese-
speaking children of Hong Kong immigrant fami-
lies with particular religious affiliations (i.e, run by
Christian churches); (c) for Mandarin-speaking
children from mainland China; and (d) for
Mandarin-speaking children of Buddhist families,
mainly from Taiwan. Most of the schools run
classes over the weekend for up to 4 hours. Parents
play a crucial role in the schoolsthey pay, gov-
ern, and teach. A typical Chinese complementary
school in the United Kingdom looks like the fol-
lowing: It rents its premises from a local school or
education centre. There is a temporary reception
desk at the entrance for parents to speak to the
teachers about any issues of interest. A sales desk
or area is available for the children to buy snacks
and drinks. Space is provided for the staff to have
tea and coffee during break time and to have
meetings. The children are grouped according
to proficiency in Chinese. There are traditional
Chinese dance, arts, and sports sessions before
or after the language and literacy sessions. Many
schools also provide English language lessons for
parents.
Within the Chinese complementary schools
context, there is a clear policy that only Chinese
should be used by the teachers and pupils (see Li
Wei & Wu, 2008). There are significant differences
between the teachers and the pupils linguistic
proficiency and preference: The teachers tend to
be native speakers of Chinese, have had a substan-
tial monolingual experience as Chinese speakers,
and prefer to use Chinese most, if not all, of the
time, whereas the pupils have had limited and
context-specific input in Chinese, have high pro-
ficiency in English, and use English as the lingua
franca with their peers, including other children
of Chinese ethnic origin. The childrens English
language proficiency in most cases is much more
sophisticated than that of the teachers. Li and
Wu (2009) examined examples of how children
manipulate the discrepancies in the language
proficiencies and preferences in Chinese and
English between themselves and their teachers to
their own advantages in the classroom. In this ar-
ticle, I will show how codeswitching is creatively
used not only in the childrens learning process
but also as an act of identity and rebellion against
the OLON or OLAT policies.
376
The data for this article come out of a large
project investigating multilingual practices in
complementary schools in a number of minor-
ity ethnic communities in the United Kingdom
(see the Acknowledgments section), as well as
two associated projects that focused specifically on
the Chinese complementary schools. The Chinese
complementary schools in the larger project were
based in Manchester. We chose one Cantonese
school and one Mandarin school there (see Li Wei
& Wu, 2009, for a discussion of some of the find-
ings; see also Blackledge & Creese, 2010). One
of the associated projects took place in Newcastle
prior to the larger multicommunity project. Like
the larger project, this pilot study investigated one
Cantonese school and one Mandarin school (see
Li Wei, 1993; Li Wei & Wu, 2008, for reports of
some of the findings from this pilot study). The
other associated project is an ongoing one that
is being carried out as a follow-up and an ex-
tension of the larger project in a London-based
school. The school is a Cantonese school. As with
the other Chinese complementary schools in the
United Kingdom, all of the Cantonese schools also
teach Mandarin. However, none of the Mandarin
schools teach Cantonese. This may be seen as a
sign of the changing hierarchies among varieties
of the Chinese language as a result of the rising
politico-economic power of mainland China (see
Li Wei & Zhu Hua, 2010a, 2010b).
In all five schools, extensive ethnographic ob-
servations were made. After initial meetings with
the administrators in each school explaining the
purpose of the research project, information
sheets were distributed to teachers, parents, and
pupils, and permissions were sought for further
data collection. We were allowed access to ob-
serve classroom interaction and to collect data in a
range of settings, including break time and formal
school events such as prize-giving ceremonies. A
selection of teachers, administrators, parents, and
pupils were interviewed, and recordings, both au-
dio and video, were made in the classroom as well
as during break time. We chose to focus on the 10-
to 12-year-old groups in all the schools we studied,
although some of the classes also included chil-
dren as young as 8 or as old as 14. In what follows,
I focus specifically on the pupils multilingual
and multimodal practices. All of the examples are
taken from the transcripts of audio-recorded in-
teractions. All examples are given in standard Chi-
nese and English orthography. The Chinese text is
followed by a pinyin transliterationthe Roman-
ized rendition of the pronunciation of the Chi-
nese charactersin brackets. The English gloss
and translation are given underneath the Chinese
transcript.
The Modern Language Journal 95 (2011)
Codeswitching
One of the tensions in Chinese complemen-
tary school classrooms is between the traditional
way of teaching and what is appropriate for this
particular group of Chinese pupils. Example 1 is
taken from a recording of a Mandarin session in
the London Chinese school. The school was set
up as a Cantonese school. The majority of chil-
dren in this school are CantoneseEnglish bilin-
guals. However, since 2001, Mandarin is also of-
fered to all children. In this example, the teacher
has asked the class to make sentences with the
Chinese adverb d (jiu). This is a particularly com-
plex word, as it has several meanings, including at
once, as early as, just about, really, simply, exactly,
and so on, and can be used with various func-
tions. A girl (G1) responded to the teacher and
made a sentence with the target word. The teacher
asked the class whether G1 got the sentence right.
This is a typical teaching method in Chinese class-
rooms, in which the teacher asks the pupils to
point out each others mistakes and correct them
collectively. In written examinations, correcting
mistakes is often used as a method of assessing
the learners linguistic knowledge. However, as we
can see in the example, the pupils think that this
kind of pedagogical activity is picking on people,
not just the language errors. Two kinds of cultural
expectations and practices seem to be at work
here.
EXAMPLE 1
(G1: girl in class; T: teacher; B1 and B2: boys in
class)
G1: ddddd (ta jiu xiang shuijiao)d
He really/just wants to sleep.
T: Good. Is there any mistake in what she said?
. . . (no response from pupils)
T: (To B1) XXX, what do you think?
B1: M ji la?
NEG. know PART.
Dont know.
T: (To B2) XX, dd(ni ne)
You PART.
How about you?
B2: dd(wo ye) mu ji.
I also
I also dont know/ (am) a hen.
All laugh loudly.
T: Stop it. dd(anjing)dBe quiet.
Silence.
B1: Can we do something else?
T: dddddd (xian shuo wanle zheige)d
Lets finish talking about this first.
B2: Whyddddddd(zongyao tiao renjia cuo a)?
always pick other people mistake PART.
Why do we always pick on others mistakes?
Li Wei
When the class did not respond to her ini-
tial question, the teacher specified B1 and asked
him to say whether he thought G1 had produced
a correct sentence with the target word. B1 re-
sponded in Cantonese, as he is a Cantonese as
a first-language (L1) speaker and he knew that
the teacher also understood Cantonese. His re-
sponse consists of a typical Cantonese negation
marker m, a verb ji (know), and an utterance
particle la. I have spelt these out in Roman let-
ters as the pronunciation here is a crucial factor.
When the teacher turned to B2 and asked for
his opinion, B2 made a pun by simply adding a
vowel to the Cantonese negation marker. How-
ever, mu in Mandarin means female, and ji in Man-
darin means chicken. By changing the pronuncia-
tion from m ji to mu ji, B2 made the phrase into
I am also a hen. CantoneseMandarin bilinguals
would understand the pun easily, and the whole
class laughed. B2 thus gained some authority, or at
least popularity, in the classroom context. When
the teacher tried to stop him making fun of the ac-
tivity, both boys, B1 and B2, protested and asked
the teacher to change the activity to something
different. B2s direct question to the teacher chal-
lenges the pedagogical practice.
There is another even subtler, but perhaps
more important, aspect of the two boys responses
to the teacher in this example. Let us remind our-
selves that this is a Mandarin session for a group
of children, most of whom are CantoneseEnglish
bilinguals. They are learning Mandarin as an ad-
ditional language. Mandarin is being actively pro-
moted in the Chinese community in Britain as a
new Chinese lingua franca to connect with main-
land China and is fast gaining currency, at least
in formal settings. Official visits by the Chinese
embassy staff to the local Chinese community or-
ganisations are always conducted in Mandarin,
and cultural events such as Chinese New Year
celebrations are increasingly done in Mandarin,
as well. Mandarin has also replaced Cantonese
in much of the satellite television and other en-
tertainment media in Europe. Even Cantonese-
speaking parents often encourage their children
to learn Mandarin at the Chinese school. How-
ever, enthusiasm for Mandarin is not universal in
the Chinese diaspora. There are groups who feel a
stronger affinity to Hong Kong and nostalgia for
pre-1997 life in the former British colony. They
see the spread of Mandarin as another example
of the increasing power and influence of the Chi-
nese government in Beijing. Even among people
who are not directly linked to Hong Kong, there
are those who see the spread of Mandarin as a
threat to Cantonese cultural heritage. Recent re-
377
ports from the Cantonese-speaking Guangdong
province of mainland China of public protests
against the testing of Mandarin proficiency for
people who wish to hold public office and the
increasing use of Mandarin in the media are ex-
amples of the popular unease. What we do not
know is how British-born generations of Chinese
children and young people feel about the elevated
status of Mandarin vis-`a-vis Cantonese. Although
we cannot be absolutely sure why B1 chose to re-
spond to the teacher in Cantonese in the present
example, his choice of language, and B2s mak-
ing fun of it, certainly has the effect of under-
mining the purpose of the class, which is to teach
Mandarin.
When we presented the case to the head teacher
of the school and asked if she thought the pupils
were resisting Mandarin, she gave a very inter-
esting answer. She told us that when the school
first decided to teach Mandarin to the children
on a voluntary basis in an extended period follow-
ing the normal standard hours for Cantonese
in other words, so the children could decide for
themselves whether they wanted to stay for an ex-
tra hour for Mandarinthe take-up rate was very
low, around 20%. So the school decided to in-
corporate Mandarin in the main teaching hours
and made it compulsory for all. The head teacher
claimed that it has been a success and the school
has been held as an example of excellence in pro-
moting Mandarin by the UK Association for the
Promotion of Chinese Education, which is the
main national advocate for Mandarin teaching.
The examples we have seen here in the pupils ac-
tual responses in the classroom may show a differ-
ent side of the story. The children may not be all
that pleased with the imposition of Mandarin on
them. Whether this is simply a concern of learning
load or more of an ideological issue, one cannot
be sure.
A similar example was observed in the Man-
darin school in Manchester (see also Li Wei & Wu,
2009). In Example 2, the teacher had asked a boy
to read out a text and then turned to the class to
ask if the boy had made any mistakes in the read-
ing. First, a girl (G1) and a boy (B1) responded
to the teacher and tried to pick out mistakes in
the pronunciation. H reacted differently and said
to the class, Stop picking on people. Its cruel.
However, G1 and the teacher ignored him and
continued with the exercise. As with the boys in
Example 1, H in Example 2 clearly knew what the
teacher expected of him. After girl Ys reading, H
picked out a mistake himself, which was verified
by the teacher. Then, he immediately changed his
tack. His next remarkthat Y spoke too fastwas
378
very much tongue-in-cheek and aimed at mocking
the whole pedagogical task.
EXAMPLE 2
(T: Teacher, G1: girl in class; B1: boy in class; H:
key participant boy)
T: d, ddddddddddd? (un, bucuod neng
tiaochu tade cuowu ma?)
Um, not bad. Can you tell where he made
mistakes?
G1: Yeah, d (zhang ) d dzang (zhang ta
shuo zang ).
Yeah, zhang, he said zang.
T: dd
Um.
B1: d (cong ) ddchong (cong ta shuo chong ) d
Cong, he said chong.
H: Stop picking on people. Its cruel.
G1: dddddddddd (xuexiao menqian ta
shuo xuexiao mianqian) d
In front of the school entrance, he said, school,
face, front.
T: ddddddddd (buguo yijing heng hao la)
d This example was taken from the Mandarin
Um, but it was pretty good.
(T naming the next person to do the exercise, Y. Y
reads fluently.)
...
H: I think she said sha instead of shua.
T (repeated the word): dd(wan shua)
H (teasing voice): I know. She said it too fast.
(Classroom recording: K6)
It could be the case that H was playing a gender
game and wanted to defend the boy who did the
first reading. He may have picked out a mistake
in Ys reading because she was a girl. However, in
both Examples 1 and 2, the pupils had little dif-
ficulty in understanding what the teachers asked
them to do in the classroom. They were very much
on task. What they wanted to challenge were (a)
the teachers authority and (b) traditional ways of
Chinese teaching. These examples also show that
the pupils language skills, in both English and
Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), are highly
developed. They are able to manipulate them
strategically and creatively to gain control of the
classroom and turn the tables on their teachers.
Examples 3 and 4, also collected in the
Manchester schools, further demonstrate how
well developed some of the pupils Chinese
skills are, especially in the speaking mode, and
how they use their skills to influence classroom
proceedings.
EXAMPLE 3
(T: Teacher, D: boy in class; Lucy: Key participant
girl)
The Modern Language Journal 95 (2011)
T (explaining the task): If you make a sentence you
have to include the person.
D: XXX (a classmates name) dddd, dddd
(yibian fangpi yibian lashi) d
XXX was farting while doing a poo.
(Pupils laugh.)
T: D, ddddddddd (zhege buyao zai ketang
shang shuo), especially in front of ladies. Be a
gentleman, dont say this, how to say, (XXX)
D, dont say that in the class,
Lucy (ironically, low voice): (XXX) all gentleman!
(Boys and girls argue about this.)
...
T: d, d d d d d d d, d d d d d d d d (ai,
nvsheng shuohua de shihou, nansheng yingdang
baochi anjing ) dBe a gentleman.
Ai, boys should keep silent while girls are speak-
ing.
Lucy (low voice): Oh my God. Shes always got that to
say.
(Pupils make disagreeing noises.)
(Classroom recording: Lucy)
school. The class was doing a sentence-making
exercise; that is, the pupils were asked to make
sentences using certain words and phrases. The
phrase given by the teacher was dd. . . dd. . .
(yibian. . . yibian. . .) (doing one thing while do-
ing something else). D, a boy, volunteered and
made a sentence of someone in the class (us-
ing a specific pupils name) farting while making
a poo. He was very quick and the sentence he
made was grammatically perfect. This caused the
whole class to laugh, which was Ds intention. The
teacher felt that she had to control D somehow
because he was making fun of a classmate, and
she told him that he must not say such things in
front of the girls. I have called this socializational
teaching (Li Wei & Wu, 2010); that is, it is not
only aimed at teaching language structures but
also imparting cultural values to the pupils. The
teachers socializational teaching in the present
context led to a dispute between the boys and
girls and the whole class moved away from the in-
tended pedagogical task of sentence-making. The
teacher then had to put a stop to it to regain
control. However, she asked the boys to be quiet
when the girls were talking. Lucy was not happy
that the teacher kept stressing the point about
gentlemen and ladies. The comment she
made was in quite a low voice, probably only audi-
ble to the girls immediately around her. We picked
up this example because the key participant pupils
wore USB recorders. Key participant pupils were
chosen from volunteers in advance of the record-
ing with permission from themselves, their par-
ents, and the class teachers.
Li Wei
In Example 4, from the Cantonese school, the
teacher asked the class to revise silently before a
dictation test. However, one boy (B) moaned and
did not want to do it.
EXAMPLE 4
(T: Teacher, B: boy in class)
T: ddddddddddd(nei hoyi m man de. Na
lingdan ma)
You dont have to revise. You just get an egg (zero
mark).
B: dd?dddddddddddddd(lingdan?
yuguo ngo na yaba fen, sifou yau yaba dan na)?
An egg (zero mark)? If I get 100 marks, does it
mean I get 100 eggs?
All laughed.
B: Anyone got this?
(Classroom recording: T3B)
B was aware of the meaning of an egg as zero
mark but chose to pick on the point and made fun
of it. He then switched to English to seek group
approval. His skills in both languages won him in-
fluential status in the class, which simultaneously
undermined the teachers authority in the class-
room.
These examples show that the pupils multi-
lingual practices in the complementary school
classrooms is multilayered: Through switching be-
tween languages, they are making fun of the ped-
agogical tasks, showing off their language skills,
rejecting traditional values imposed on them,
challenging the teachers authority, and demon-
strating their symbolic competence as well as mul-
tilingual identities.
Modeswitching
I want to turn now to some examples of multi-
lingual practices that involve different modalities.
As has been said earlier, a particular focus of the
complementary schools for minority ethnic chil-
dren in Britain is on literacy teaching (i.e., literacy
in the heritage language, not English). However,
all of the children are literate in English, as well;
some may have learned other languages and writ-
ing systems, too. As far as the Chinese complemen-
tary schools are concerned, most of the teachers
believe that teaching the children to read and
write Chinese characters is their most important
task. Most of the classroom time is spent on get-
ting the children to read the Chinese characters
and a considerable amount of writing is also done
in the classroom.
Most of the Chinese characters are either
pictographs and ideographs or a combination
379
of the two. Examples of pictographs include the
following:
d d d d
sun moon mountain umbrella
Examples of ideographs include the following:
d d d d
one two three middle
An example of a pictographideograph com-
pound is
d
sun + moon = bright
To teach the characters, the teacher sometimes
draws pictures showing the origins of pictographs
or analyzes and explains the meanings of the
ideographs. Many Chinese pupils are fascinated
by the stories behind some of the characters. How-
ever, it is traditional for the Chinese teachers to
insist on good handwriting, by which they often
mean following a strict order of the strokes and
balance of sizes of the different component parts.
They also tend to ask the pupils to copy the char-
acters repeatedly. It is very common for a teacher
at a Chinese school to ask the pupils to copy any
new character 50100 times, and collective correc-
tion of mistakes in character writing is a common
activity in class.
As in some of the earlier examples, the pupils in
the schools that we studied were unhappy with the
teaching method, even though they were keen to
learn about the characters. In Example 5, which
was recorded in a Mandarin school in Newcastle,
the pupils are making fun of the task by deliber-
ately writing the wrong characters.
EXAMPLE 5
(T: teacher; B1: boy in class)
T: dddddddddddd(houcheshi de hou
you mei you yige xiao shu)?
The word wait in waiting room, does it have a
small downward stroke or not?
(No response from the pupils)
Teacher writes on the whiteboard: ddd (houcheshi
waiting room, without the stroke in the middle)
T: dddddd(zhege hou dui bu dui)?
This wait, is it correct?
B1: Dont know. d, dd(dui, budui) d
Correct, not correct.
T: ddddddd dddd(ni shanglai xie yixia.
xie dui de.)
You come up and write one. Write the correct
one.
B1 goes to the whiteboard and writes d (monkey).
Everybody laughs.
380 The Modern Language Journal 95 (2011)

The teacher puts a cross over it and says, d d What difference can you see between the two
d(renzhen dian Be serious.) and writes the correct characters?
character d. G1: Can we write (using finger spelling in the air to
indicate the character)?
In this example, the teacher was trying to draw T: ddddd(shanglai xie yixia)d
the pupils attention to the details of a specific Come up and write it.
character. She deliberately wrote the wrong char- G1 goes up and writes on the whiteboard, d.
acter, without the small downward stroke in the B1: Thats rice.
middle, and asked the class whether it was cor- T: You come.
rect. The teachers question ddd (dui bu dui B1 goes up and writes d (which sounds the same but
is only half of the character).
correct or not) is of a unique syntactic structure
Some pupils giggle.
in Chinese, A not A. B1 knows exactly what the
B1: Thats simplified.
teacher was asking and how the structure worked. B2: Yeah, thats how they write it in the restaurant.
He first responded in English Dont know. He
then switched to Chinese and copied the teachers
First, G1 responded to the teacher with finger
phrase, except that he added a very short pause af-
spelling, which is very common among literate
ter the first d(dui correct), making it sound as
Chinese language users. Homonyms are a special
if he was hesitating. The response then became
feature of the Chinese language, which has thou-
Correct, not correct, meaning Im not sure
sands of characters that have the same pronunci-
whether it is correct or not. When the teacher
ation. Chinese people often try to spell the target
asked him to come up to the whiteboard and
characters with their fingers in the air, for exam-
write the correct character, he wrote the character
ple, when they try to tell others exactly which char-
for monkey, which has the target character for
acters their names are. However, in reality it is very
wait in it but has an additional radical on the left
difficult for anyone to understand finger spelling
meaning animal. What it shows is that B1 knew
unless it is accompanied by verbal explanation of
exactly how to write the correct character. He took
how it is written. The teacher in Example 6 hence
the opportunity to make fun of the exercise and
asked G1 to come to the whiteboard and write the
made the class laugh.
character out. The character G1 wrote has the se-
I have seen many examples of the pupils delib-
mantic radical rice in it. However, it is not a stan-
erately changing the Chinese characters to make
dard character. She may have seen people writing
them funny or rude. The exercise books that they
it in Chinese restaurants. B1 recognised it and
are given in the Chinese schools often bear the
said that it meant rice. The teacher asked him
characters ddd copying character book on
to write his alternative. The character B1 wrote is
the front. I have seen several pupils changing the
the phonetic radical of the target character and
word d copy to d stir-fry, which differs in
is often used by Chinese restaurant waiters as a
the left semantic radical, from hand to fire.
shorthand when taking orders. But, it is not a cor-
This is particularly culturally relevant as many of
rect form for the word food or rice. When
the children are from families that run Chinese
some of his classmates giggled, he protested and
restaurants and takeaways.
claimed that he wrote a simplified character. His
The last example I want to discuss comes from
friend B2 came to his defence by claiming that it is
the Cantonese school in Newcastle. In this case,
done in Chinese restaurants. Again, the example
the teacher is trying to explain the difference be-
shows that the pupils are very aware of the details
tween the traditional complex character for food,
of the Chinese characters, as well as what is going
d, which could also mean rice and is often
on the social world around them.
used by Cantonese speakers, and its simplified
Two key issues emerge from these examples.
version of mainland China, d, which is increas-
First, let us remind ourselves that one of the prin-
ingly popular in the Chinese immigrant commu-
cipal objectives of the complementary schools
nities. After writing both characters side by side
is to teach literacy. Often literacy is under-
on the whiteboard, the teacher asked the class the
stood narrowly as being in one languagein the
following:
present case, Chinese. If we look at the chil-
drens language abilities from such a monoliteracy
EXAMPLE 6
perspective, we would have grounds to claim that
(T: teacher; G1: girl in class; B1 and B2: boys in
the Chinese schools have failed in their principal
class)
objective. Yet, if we adopt a multiliteracy perspec-
T: d d d d d d d d d d d d (nimen kan zhe tive, we can argue that the children are highly
liangge zi you shengme butong)? skilled in putting their linguistic knowledge to
Li Wei
creative and critical use. The notion of multilit-
eracy was invented by the New London Group
(1996), an international group of educators who
wanted to highlight both the increasing salience
of linguistic and cultural diversity in schools and
classrooms as well as the increasing complexity of
texts being used in literacy educationthat is, the
proliferation of multimodal ways of making mean-
ing where the written word is mixed with visual,
audio, and spatial patterns. It led to a major shift
of interest in literacy pedagogy from conventional
written or print text to multimodal signs that are
often mediated through new technologies. This
brings us to the second and closely related issue
emerging from the present examples.
The teaching and learning in the complemen-
tary school classrooms that we have studied in-
volve a range of modalities, as they do in any class-
room, including speech, writing, gesture, gaze,
body posture, movement, and so on. In other
words, teaching and learning are a multimodal
activity. In the present case, we have chosen to fo-
cus on examples in which the teachers and pupils
employ speech, writing, and gestures (e.g., fin-
ger spelling) in the teaching of Chinese char-
acters. They switch between these modalities to
make sense and negotiate meaning of the activ-
ities in which they are engaged. In multilingual-
ism research, there has so far been very little re-
search on multimodal codeswitching, except for
Sebbas work on written multilingual texts (cf.
Sebba, 2010; in press).
Drawing data from the same core project as
the present study, Lytra, Martin, Barac, and Bhatt
(2010) discussed other examples of multimodal-
ity interactions in Turkish and Gujarati literacy
classes, in which they observed parallel commu-
nication via mobile phones, hand-held computer
games, and other technical gadgets (see also, Ly-
tra, in press). In the Chinese schools that we stud-
ied, almost all of the pupils have mobile phones
and many bring computer games and other gad-
gets with them. They often text each other in class
while listening to what the teacher has to say. They
also communicate with others outside the school
while following the class. Although most of them
text message in English, many have Chinese input
functions in their mobile phones and many of the
computer games are in Chinese. Moreover, the
Chinese complementary schools often show Chi-
nese films and video, most of which have both Chi-
nese and English subtitles. The complex system of
sound, vision, gesture, and digital and electronic
signs and signals provides a multimodal learning
environment, in which knowledge of the different
languages, including the writing systems, are put
to use. Such multimodality interaction, and the
381
multiliteracy practices, require further, systematic
examination.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
As I described at the beginning of this article,
the complementary schools for minority ethnic
children in Britain are set up to teach literacy
in the heritage languages. Most of them have an
OLON or OLAT policy. The Chinese complemen-
tary schools are no exception. However, as our
examples show, both the teachers and the pupils
use a great deal of English and they codeswitch
frequently and regularly in and out of the class-
room. Their behaviours provide further examples
of the kind of argument Heller and Martin-Jones
(2001) put forward that multilingual practices are
a symbolic resource of contestation and struggle
against institutional ideologies. In particular, we
have shown through examples of classroom inter-
action how Chinese pupils used their language
skills to simultaneously follow and flout the rules
and norms of behaviour in the school. They ex-
ploit the full sets of their linguistic and modal
resources to showcase their creativity and criti-
cality by challenging the teachers authority and
traditional ways of Chinese teaching and subvert-
ing the pedagogic task. These examples also show
that the pupils communication skills, if under-
stood from a multilingual and multimodal per-
spective, are highly developed. They are able to
switch between languages and modalities strategi-
cally to gain control of the classroom and turn the
table on their teachers. They are also highly skill-
ful in manipulating the discrepancies in language
proficiencies between themselves and the teach-
ers. These skills are an important part of what
Kramsch (2006) called symbolic competence.
Through codeswitching and modeswitching, the
children are shifting frames of reference and mak-
ing relevant local as well as global semiotic re-
sources, including gender, life experience, popu-
lar culture, and language ideologies.
Although the examples may give the impression
that English is used by the pupils to counter the
teaching of Chinese language and heritage, we
want to emphasise the flexible, creative bilingual-
ism expressed through the pupils creative use
of codeswitching, which is made possible by the
safe environment of the complementary school
(see also Blackledge & Creese, 2010). It is impor-
tant to point out that it is the pupils who make
the complementary school a safe space through
their multilingual practices, which are often in
opposition to the discourses of the institutions
and teachers, not in opposition to the institutional
purpose. The pupils multilingual creativitythe
382
ability to choose between following and flouting
the rules and norms of behaviour, and very of-
ten to do both simultaneouslyin the classroom
is perhaps the most significant finding of the
present study and a point that I wish to highlight.
Creativity in my view is about pushing and break-
ing the boundaries between the old and the new,
the conventional and the original, and the accept-
able and the challenging. It entails a high level of
criticality, as wellthat is, the ability to assess the
situation systematically and insightfully, to ques-
tion and problematize received wisdom, and to
articulate views and opinions in a reasoned way.
The examples we have seen in this article show
that the pupils are fully aware of the rules and ex-
pectations of the school and of the teachers. Yet,
they dare to challenge authority and tradition.
They clearly feel confident about their identities
and abilities.
Creativity and criticality often come out of ten-
sions, conflicts, competitions, differences, and
change. Bilingualism and multilingualism by the
nature of the phenomena entail tension, if not
outright conflicttensions between ideologies,
policies, and practices; tensions in historical and
current contexts; tensions between generations
within a community (i.e., ongoing changes),
and tensions between different communities. All
of these provide important sources of creativity
and criticality. Viewed from this perspective, the
OLON and OLAT policies of the complementary
schools, like the monolingual ideologies, policies,
and practices of other institutions, could harm
the development of creativity and criticality as
they block the access to knowledge in different
languages and modalities and reduce the self-
confidence of the multilingual language user.
The multicompetence perspective that I have
tried to apply in this article enables a holistic
look at multilingual and multimodal practices. It
helps to highlight creativity and criticality, shown
through codeswitching and modeswitching. The
examples we have seen of switching between dif-
ferent modalities are particularly good evidence
of multicompetence of this group of multilingual
language users and the creative and critical use of
the multilingual resources they have. The switch-
ing between speech and writing and gestures, plus
various other activities in different communica-
tion channels, also contributes to the childrens
sense of being new and different from their par-
ents and grandparents. They are a new generation
of British citizens and a new generation of eth-
nic Chinese in Britain. By approaching multilin-
gual and multimodal practices from a multicom-
petence perspective, I hope to have contributed
to an emerging body of evidence of new multilin-
gualism (e.g., Cenoz & Gorter, 2006; Pennycook,
2010), especially among young people (e.g., Cut-
The Modern Language Journal 95 (2011)
ler, 2008; Eckert, 2008; Jaspers, 2008), and to a bet-
ter understanding of multilingual pupils knowl-
edge and skills as well as their perspectives on the
world, especially on education, cultural tradition,
and social relationships.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I have benefitted a great deal from
talking and working with Vivian Cook, who developed
the multicompetence concept. His advice and support
have been most important to me. The article has been
presented at various seminars and conferences, espe-
cially the American Association for Applied Linguistics
(AAAL) conference in Atlanta in 2010. I am very grate-
ful to the warm reception and constructive comments
from the audience. Jasone Cenoz and Durk Gorter have
provided valuable support throughout the writing pro-
cess, without which the article may never have been
written. The Economic and Social Research Council of
Great Britain funded the project Investigating Multi-
lingualism in Complementary Schools in Four Commu-
nities (ESRC, RES-00023-1180), from which this arti-
cle draws some of its examples. Apart from myself, the
research team of the project included Angela Creese,
Taskn Barac, Arvind Bhatt, Adrian Blackledge, Shahela
Hamid, Vally Lytra, Dilek Yagcioglu-Ali, the late Peter
Martin, and Chao-Jung Wu, who collected most of the
Chinese data. Zhu Hua is currently working with me in
Chinese schools in London. She has provided important
input into the data analysis in this article.
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384 The Modern Language Journal 95 (2011)

Ten-Year Anniversary of Perspectives

The winter issue of 2011 marks the 10-year anniversary of the influential and highly successful Perspectives
column. Under the leadership of Heidi Byrnes as Associate Editor in charge of Perspectives, this column has
addressed an extraordinary range of highly current and often controversial topics. These have been widely read
and cited, and have often been used as required reading in graduate programs and professional development
courses. Professor Byrnes wishes to inform the readers of the MLJ that the 95.4 issue of Perspectives will be
her last one. At the same time, of course, readers have already been informed that Professor Byrnes will be
the next Editor in Chief of the MLJ , starting in January 2013, when Leo van Lier will step down. We wish to
thank Heidi for her extraordinary effort, skill, courage, and wisdom in putting together this remarkable set of
commentaries and debates. In themselves they constitute a memento of the hot topics and controversies that
have marked the last decade. We will keep you informed of any new developments on the Perspectives front,
and if you wish to share comments and ideas, please email us at mlj@miis.edu.

MLJ Perspectives: 20022011

86.2 (Summer 2002): Enrollment in colleges: Language curricula in universities: What and how, 242255.
86.4 (Winter 2002). Enrollment in K12, 604616.
87.2 (Summer 2003): Implications of language education policies for language study in schools and universities:
International perspectives, 277296.
87.4 (Winter 2003): Implications of language education policies for language study in schools and universities:
U.S. perspectives, 578597.
88.2 (Summer 2004): Teaching language and cultures in a post-9/11 world: North American perspectives,
266291.
88.4 (Winter 2004): Teaching languages and cultures in a post-9/11 world: International perspectives, 617631.
89.2 (Summer 2005): The No Child Left Behind Act and teaching and learning languages in U.S. schools,
248282.
89.4 (Winter 2005): The position of heritage languages in language education policy, 582616.
90.2 (Summer 2006): Interrogating communicative competence as a framework for collegiate FL study, 244
266.
90.4 (Winter 2006): The outcomes of collegiate FL programs: Specifications, assessment, evaluation, 588615.
91.2 (Summer 2007): National language education policy (Guest editors: Robert Blake & Claire Kramsch),
247283.
91.4 (Winter 2007): The Common European Framework of Reference: Perspectives on the making of supra-
national language education policy, 541585.
92.2 (Summer 2008): Transforming collegiate foreign language departments: A proposal, 284312.
92.4 (Winter 2008): From representation at the federal/national level to creating a foreign language education
framework, 614631.
93.2 (Summer 2009): The challenge of ensuring high-quality language teachers in K12 classrooms, 261291.
93.4 (Winter 2009): The role of foreign language departments in internationalizing the curriculum, 607627.
94.2 (Summer 2010): Revisiting the role of culture in the foreign language curriculum, 315336.
94.4 (Winter 2010): The changing scene for publishing in Applied Linguistics journals: A view from editors,
636664.
95.2 (Summer 2011): Connecting language learning to the community, 291307.
95.4 (Winter 2011): Of handbooks, encyclopedias, and summative treatments, in press.