"Do languages die?" Promoting awareness of language and linguistic diversity in preschool

Abstract

This chapter presents the results of an awakening to languages workshop entitled “Do languages die?”, carried out with a group of Portuguese preschool children. In the workshop children listened to songs in endangered languages, created an invented writing system, and performed syllabic and phonemic suppression tasks. We gathered data through video and audio recordings of the workshop and phonological awareness tests, applied to the children and to a control group. After the implementation of the workshop, the experimental group increased their phonological awareness significantly. In contrast, the phonological abilities of the control group remained substantially unaltered. These findings suggest that early contact with linguistic diversity may develop children’s awareness of language both at micro and macro levels.