Sunny Man Chu Lau
Biographic Data
| ID | 6724738 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sunny Man Chu Lau |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sunny Man Chu |
| FAMILY NAME | Lau |
| SIGNATURE | LAU S M C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bishop's University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2501-2799 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Decolonizing Applied Linguistics
The Decolonial Turn has gained momentum in academe since the early 21st century. Focusing on how coloniality survives colonialism, scholars from the Global South have been instrumental in uncovering how the hidden agenda of modernity defines knowledges, languages, and beings in racial terms to justify the superiority of European colonizers. This entry not only traces the early decolonizing efforts in applied linguistics but also describes the rec…
Beyond Compartmentalized L1/L2 Teaching: Connecting Languages to Foster In‐Depth Learning and Multi/Trans Lingual Selves
This paper examines elementary Grade 5 and 6 students’ emic perspectives on their L1 French and L2 English teachers’ cross‐curricular efforts to build linguistic and conceptual bridges. Drawing on research on translanguaging pedagogies and recent motivation scholarship, we propose a multi‐competence view of motivation that aligns more closely with translanguaging classroom practices. Using this lens, we analyzed focal students’ interview data on …
A social justice research agenda for multilingual assessment in diverse educational contexts
Research and practice in bilingual education have contributed significant insights into teaching and learning from a multilingual stance. Despite these efforts, language and curriculum subject assessment continue to adhere to monolingual practices, not reflecting students’ dynamic language use and potentially reinforcing English dominance and linguistic hierarchies. Transforming education practice requires concomitant change in current monolingua…
Reading plurilingual texts: Children’s critical engagement with unfamiliar languages and eco-social issues
This paper elaborates on some initial findings from a plurilingual comprehension task that a Grade 6 class in Quebec, Canada, completed without teacher guidance, as a baseline tool to illuminate their existing language awareness and reading abilities for critical understanding. Drawing on previous research on plurilingualism and critical literacy, this study is part of a broader research project that brings together teachers of French and English…
University researcher-instructor partnership: Co-learning of trans/plurilingual pedagogies for critical language awareness in French L2/Lx classrooms
Drawing on trans/plurilingual approaches, this paper describes a collaborative action research project between an education researcher and two university instructors of French as a second or other language (L2/Lx) in Quebec, Canada to explore holistic and dynamic ways of L2/Lx education for critical language and cultural awareness. Valuing research as praxis, we examine our three-year interdisciplinary collaboration processes, describing how our …
Plurilingual Chinese learners of French Lx: Agentic assembling of semiotic resources for learning
This paper reports an interview study with Chinese international students in an Anglophone university in Quebec, Canada, exploring their use of language and cross-language learning strategies to support their learning of French Lx (third language and beyond). Drawing on plurilingualism, Dynamic Model of Multilingualism, and language learning strategies, this article examines how Chinese learners made dynamic, creative, and, at times, unexpected l…
Years of Critical Inquiry in Language Studies
This year, the international journal Critical Inquiry in Language Studies (CILS) publishes its 20th volume, marking twenty years of contribution to critical scholarship in the broad, interdisciplin
Translanguaging pedagogies in a Mandarin-English dual language bilingual education classroom: Contextualised learning from teacher-researcher collaboration
Teacher-researcher collaborative inquiry helps illuminate contextual demands and affordances of teaching and learning and how they shape and inform theory and practice. Elaborating on a university-school study in a Mandarin-English dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programme in the U.S., we examine how the researcher worked alongside a Grade 3 Mandarin teacher in implementing translanguaging approaches across different content areas. We fo…
Text Production as Process: Negotiating Multiliterate Learning & Identities
In this secondary research study, we investigate the text/identity/curriculum work enacted in a primary university-school project with third-grade children in Québec who were engaged in inquiry into children’s rights through bilingual text production. Drawing on sociocultural perspectives of language and identity as well as translanguaging, we examined both the product and the process of identity text production. Analysing classroom interactions …
Convergences and alignments between translanguaging and critical literacies work in bilingual classrooms
Translanguaging pedagogy, stemming from a dynamic view of bilingualism, aims to creatively mobilize students’ plural communicative repertoires for meaningful learning and destabilize hegemonic discourses about minoritized students and languages. It espouses in itself a criticality that raises awareness of the inequitable and arbitrary nature of language hierarchy, separation and marginalization for social justice purposes, a central tenet shared …
Translanguaging for Transgressive Praxis: Promoting Critical Literacy in a MultiAge Bilingual Classroom
bell hooks's (1994) advocacy for teaching to transgress invites educators and students alike to transgress boundaries to strive for ways to know and live fully and deeply as whole human beings. The authors aim to showcase a transgressive attempt in bringing French and English into one multiage (Grades 4–6) classroom, with its two teachers—English language arts and French as a second language—coordinating their teaching and curriculum design to bu…
Language, Identity, and Emotionality: Exploring the Potential of Language Portraits in Preparing Teachers for Diverse Learners
The present study, framed from a critical and transformative approach to teacher education, aims to investigate whether language portraits (Prasad, 2010)—the mapping of one's language and cultural make-up on a body template—can help improve student teachers' self-understanding about language and identities and can foster critical reflection regarding their attitudes towards linguistic diversity. This study looks particularly at how emotional enga…
Intercultural education through a bilingual children’s rights project: Reflections on its possibilities and challenges with young learners
Despite the growing importance of intercultural education, literature is still lacking in related research with young learners. This study reports on a yearlong university–school collaborative research project that aimed to promote students’ intercultural competence and critical bi-literacy skills through their exploration of the issue of children’s rights. Grounded in the critical perspectives of intercultural pedagogy and dynamic bi-/multilingu…
Intercultural education through a bilingual children’s rights project: Reflections on its possibilities and challenges with young learners
Despite the growing importance of intercultural education, literature is still lacking in related research with young learners. This study reports on a yearlong university–school collaborative research project that aimed to promote students’ intercultural competence and critical bi-literacy skills through their exploration of the issue of children’s rights. Grounded in the critical perspectives of intercultural pedagogy and dynamic bi-/multilingu…
Language, Identity, and Emotionality: Exploring the Potential of Language Portraits in Preparing Teachers for Diverse Learners
The present study, framed from a critical and transformative approach to teacher education, aims to investigate whether language portraits (Prasad, 2010)—the mapping of one's language and cultural make-up on a body template—can help improve student teachers' self-understanding about language and identities and can foster critical reflection regarding their attitudes towards linguistic diversity. This study looks particularly at how emotional enga…
Text Production as Process: Negotiating Multiliterate Learning & Identities
In this secondary research study, we investigate the text/identity/curriculum work enacted in a primary university-school project with third-grade children in Québec who were engaged in inquiry into children’s rights through bilingual text production. Drawing on sociocultural perspectives of language and identity as well as translanguaging, we examined both the product and the process of identity text production. Analysing classroom interactions …
Intercultural education through a bilingual children’s rights project: Reflections on its possibilities and challenges with young learners
Despite the growing importance of intercultural education, literature is still lacking in related research with young learners. This study reports on a yearlong university–school collaborative research project that aimed to promote students’ intercultural competence and critical bi-literacy skills through their exploration of the issue of children’s rights. Grounded in the critical perspectives of intercultural pedagogy and dynamic bi-/multilingu…
Language, Identity, and Emotionality: Exploring the Potential of Language Portraits in Preparing Teachers for Diverse Learners
The present study, framed from a critical and transformative approach to teacher education, aims to investigate whether language portraits (Prasad, 2010)—the mapping of one's language and cultural make-up on a body template—can help improve student teachers' self-understanding about language and identities and can foster critical reflection regarding their attitudes towards linguistic diversity. This study looks particularly at how emotional enga…
Translanguaging for Transgressive Praxis: Promoting Critical Literacy in a MultiAge Bilingual Classroom
bell hooks's (1994) advocacy for teaching to transgress invites educators and students alike to transgress boundaries to strive for ways to know and live fully and deeply as whole human beings. The authors aim to showcase a transgressive attempt in bringing French and English into one multiage (Grades 4–6) classroom, with its two teachers—English language arts and French as a second language—coordinating their teaching and curriculum design to bu…
Convergences and alignments between translanguaging and critical literacies work in bilingual classrooms
Translanguaging pedagogy, stemming from a dynamic view of bilingualism, aims to creatively mobilize students’ plural communicative repertoires for meaningful learning and destabilize hegemonic discourses about minoritized students and languages. It espouses in itself a criticality that raises awareness of the inequitable and arbitrary nature of language hierarchy, separation and marginalization for social justice purposes, a central tenet shared …
Text Production as Process: Negotiating Multiliterate Learning & Identities
In this secondary research study, we investigate the text/identity/curriculum work enacted in a primary university-school project with third-grade children in Québec who were engaged in inquiry into children’s rights through bilingual text production. Drawing on sociocultural perspectives of language and identity as well as translanguaging, we examined both the product and the process of identity text production. Analysing classroom interactions …
Plurilingual Chinese learners of French Lx: Agentic assembling of semiotic resources for learning
This paper reports an interview study with Chinese international students in an Anglophone university in Quebec, Canada, exploring their use of language and cross-language learning strategies to support their learning of French Lx (third language and beyond). Drawing on plurilingualism, Dynamic Model of Multilingualism, and language learning strategies, this article examines how Chinese learners made dynamic, creative, and, at times, unexpected l…
Years of Critical Inquiry in Language Studies
This year, the international journal Critical Inquiry in Language Studies (CILS) publishes its 20th volume, marking twenty years of contribution to critical scholarship in the broad, interdisciplin
Translanguaging pedagogies in a Mandarin-English dual language bilingual education classroom: Contextualised learning from teacher-researcher collaboration
Teacher-researcher collaborative inquiry helps illuminate contextual demands and affordances of teaching and learning and how they shape and inform theory and practice. Elaborating on a university-school study in a Mandarin-English dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programme in the U.S., we examine how the researcher worked alongside a Grade 3 Mandarin teacher in implementing translanguaging approaches across different content areas. We fo…
University researcher-instructor partnership: Co-learning of trans/plurilingual pedagogies for critical language awareness in French L2/Lx classrooms
Drawing on trans/plurilingual approaches, this paper describes a collaborative action research project between an education researcher and two university instructors of French as a second or other language (L2/Lx) in Quebec, Canada to explore holistic and dynamic ways of L2/Lx education for critical language and cultural awareness. Valuing research as praxis, we examine our three-year interdisciplinary collaboration processes, describing how our …
Decolonizing Applied Linguistics
The Decolonial Turn has gained momentum in academe since the early 21st century. Focusing on how coloniality survives colonialism, scholars from the Global South have been instrumental in uncovering how the hidden agenda of modernity defines knowledges, languages, and beings in racial terms to justify the superiority of European colonizers. This entry not only traces the early decolonizing efforts in applied linguistics but also describes the rec…
Beyond Compartmentalized L1/L2 Teaching: Connecting Languages to Foster In‐Depth Learning and Multi/Trans Lingual Selves
This paper examines elementary Grade 5 and 6 students’ emic perspectives on their L1 French and L2 English teachers’ cross‐curricular efforts to build linguistic and conceptual bridges. Drawing on research on translanguaging pedagogies and recent motivation scholarship, we propose a multi‐competence view of motivation that aligns more closely with translanguaging classroom practices. Using this lens, we analyzed focal students’ interview data on …
A social justice research agenda for multilingual assessment in diverse educational contexts
Research and practice in bilingual education have contributed significant insights into teaching and learning from a multilingual stance. Despite these efforts, language and curriculum subject assessment continue to adhere to monolingual practices, not reflecting students’ dynamic language use and potentially reinforcing English dominance and linguistic hierarchies. Transforming education practice requires concomitant change in current monolingua…
Reading plurilingual texts: Children’s critical engagement with unfamiliar languages and eco-social issues
This paper elaborates on some initial findings from a plurilingual comprehension task that a Grade 6 class in Quebec, Canada, completed without teacher guidance, as a baseline tool to illuminate their existing language awareness and reading abilities for critical understanding. Drawing on previous research on plurilingualism and critical literacy, this study is part of a broader research project that brings together teachers of French and English…
Multilingual Education and Policy (12 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (11 works) · Pedagogy (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (7 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · Translanguaging (7 works) · Multilingualism (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Literacy (4 works)