In 2017, Miriam Weidl and Samantha Goodchild developed free online teaching materials, which are based on their experiences of multilingual language use in a highly multilingual and multicultural area in the southern Casamance in Senegal within the Crossroads project. The teaching materials accompany clips from the award-winning documentary film Kanraxël, which depicts multilingual life in the small Senegalese village Agnack.

The materials consist of a general introduction with suggested readings on multilingualism, forming five modules, with the following overall topics:

• Language Policies in Multilingual Education
• Methods for Sociolinguistic (video) Recordings
• Linguistic Repertoires
• Language Use in Different Spheres
• Context-Dependent Language Use and Language Attitudes

Each of the modules includes an introduction to the module, an Instructor’s Manual and a Student’s Manual. The Instructor’s manual introduces the instructor to the content of the module, presents the learning objectives, provides suggested and further readings, and includes a detailed description of different exercises which be can used in class (discussions, debates, presentations, short research sessions, data analysis, etc.). They further include video clips, which are excerpts from the  documentary film Kanraxël, to provide the students with audio-visual data to discuss, interpret, analyse or criticise as part of some of the exercises. The Students’ Manuals are separate documents, which can be printed and handed to the students by the instructor to introduce them to the exercises.

All of the modules critically address the topics mentioned above and can be used by university instructors to teach a full course on multilingualism-related topics or single modules and exercises can be picked out to teach separately.

These materials are freely available and can be used for free: https://www.kanraxel.uk/university

The website hosting these materials, and also free teaching resources for secondary schools, will be launched on 20 February 2018 at an event hosted by the Royal Anthropological Institute: “When multilingualism is your mother tongue – the documentary Kanraxël and associated teaching resources”

After an introduction to the film and the teaching resources, the film Kanraxël will be screened.

Registration on Eventbrite for this event is free, but compulsory. Come and join us to reflect on multilingualism as a world-wide reality!