“Lights, Câmera, Acción:” Multilingual Practices in the Construction of Short Films

Abstract

Looking at students as multilingual subjects leads us to recognize their linguistic repertoires as composed by various socioideological languages, codes and voices. Through this post-structuralist view, being multilingual implies the use of different national, regional and idiosyncratic languages. Bearing this in mind, the main objective of this chapter is to present a project-based methodology for the teaching of English through which learners were expected to be engaged in multilingual practices. The project envisioned the production of short films by students of a Brazilian and a Peruvian institution. Throughout the project, multilingual experiences were pedagogically cultivated through tasks that (1) fostered students to be creative, (2) developed their linguistic repertoires through exchange and collaboration, and (3) ultimately explored their particular viewpoints through meaning-making practices. Based on this shared practice, we hope to shed light on how multilingualism can be theoretically understood in a postmodern framing, and how it might be methodologically designed through a project-based pedagogy.