Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Greece

Thessaloniki

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
University Campus
54124, Thessaloniki
Greece

There is no Internet website of the program.

- Language and other introductory courses for refugee students

- Newly arrived refugees
- Refugees of second generation
- University staff (academic and administrative)

The main purpose of the research was to establish an approach to the language development and learning process in the framework of translanguaging, through refugee identity texts, in a continuous dialectic relationship with the researchers and with the objective of inclusion practices. The research objectives were:
• The democratization of researchers’ discourse through continuous reflection and amendment of practices
• The determination of educational material characteristics suitable for meeting language teaching needs of adult refugees
• The contribution to inclusion of refugees in Greek society, on terms of fair and equal coexistence.

In the classes an effort had been made to formulate comparative material on a translanguaging basis, encouraging teachers and students to transcend dominant monolingual teaching traditions. Using material that utilise the students’ voices was a powerful means of challenging traditional grammar-centred approaches to language learning (Tsokalidou, 2017).
Moreover, the reaserch team adopted the premise that teaching material which is founded on translanguaging should aim at developing a type of literacy with a political and critical content. To this end, a variety of corpora and text types (monomodal, multimodal, multimedia texts as well as songs, movies, posters, etc.) were used which were studied in close connection with the surrounding sociocultural local and global reality. New technologies were also used towards a similar critical direction, with the creation of an e-classroom as an environment of interaction and collaboration. Connection via social media replaced communication outside class and the learning process, contributed towards a greater familiarisation between the group members through authentic communication circumstances.