מחקר בתחום הוראת שפות

​The Multilingualism and Multiculturalism Research Group

About Us: (brief description, aims, projects), people (group leader, group members with a link to their brief CV (one page +pictures)

The Multilingualism and Multiculturalism Research Group, led by Dr. Susan Joffe, is a group of Oranim faculty members whose areas of expertise include language teaching and  the intersection of language, education, and society.

•   Researching language and society.

Increasing and improving intercultural communication and understanding in our society.

•   Promoting multilingualism and multiculturalism in our schools and institutions of higher education, to better meet the needs of multilingual children and their teachers.

•   Promotion of the use of authentic texts for teaching which emphasize both the similarities and differences between languages, societies, and cultures

•   Providing  undergraduate and graduate students opportunities to engage in research group projects.

•    Organization of meetings and workshops

•    Advocacy to promote multilingual and multicultural education in Israel

•    Improvement of intergroup relations through language teaching and learning

Abutbol-Oz, H. and S. Joffe. (2011). “Language Proficiency, Social Integration, and Ethnic Identity among Russian-Hebrew and English-Hebrew speaking preschool children.” Hed Haulpan Hachadash, Volume 98, Spring issue. In Hebrew.

Armon-Lotem, S., S. Joffe, H. Abutbul-Oz, C. Altman, and J. Walters (2014). Language exposure, ethnolinguistic identity and attitudes in the acquisition of Hebrew as a second language among bilingual preschool children from Russian- and English-speaking backgrounds. In T. Gruter and J. Paradis (Eds.) Input and Experience in Bilingual Development (pp. 77-98). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.

Avirbach, B. (2020). "Arabisms in R. Judah Ibn-Tibbon's translated and original writings". In: Bar-Asher Siegal, E. and Ya'akov, D. (eds.). Medieval Hebrew and Aramaic: Studies in Language and Grammatical Thought: 67–90 (in Hebrew).

Avirbach, B. (forthcoming). "Five Roses: a comparative linguistic discussion in four Hebrew translations of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne". To be published in Al-Hassad, 10 (in Hebrew, 24 pages).

Dubiner, D. (2019). ‘Like a blind man’: Sociolinguistic perspectives of an intercultural encounter in Israel. In Espinosa Ramírez, A. B., Espinosa Villegas, M. A., & García Arévalo, T.M.  (Eds.), Encuentros interculturales en sociedades multiculturales: inmigración, multiculturalismo y multiculturalidad (pp. 193-213). Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada.

Dubiner, D. (2018). ‘We don’t think about it, we just mix’: language choice and ethnolinguistic identity among Arabic-Hebrew bilinguals in Israel. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 1-16. DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2018.1452893

Meir, N., Joffe, S., Shabtaev, R., Walters, J. & Armon-Lotem, S. (forthcoming). Heritage Languages of Israel: a multilingual tapestry with Hebrew threads. In Polinsky, M. & Montrul, S. (Eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics.

Schwartz, M. (2020). Strategies and practices of home language maintenance. In A. C. Schalley & S. A. Eisenchlas (Eds.), Handbook of Social and Affective Factors in Home Language Maintenance and Development (pp. 194-217). Mouton de Gruyter.

Schwartz, M., Deeb, I. & Dubiner, D. (2020). "When they act, they speak more": Strategies that encourage language production in a bilingual preschool. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.

Schwartz, M., Kirsch, C., & Mortini, S. (2020). Young children’s language-based agency in multilingual contexts in Luxembourg and Israel. Applied Linguistic Review.

Zeevi, I. & Dubiner, D. (2016). Outdoor signage as a trait in the linguistic landscape during Operation Protective Edge. Linguistic Landscape: An international Journal (2)1. 80-103.

Avirbach, Barak. "The nominal sentence in R. Judah Ibn-Tibbon's translation of Duties of the Hearts". The 46th annual conference of the Israeli Association of Applied Linguistics. Gordon Academic College, Haifa, October 22, 2019.

Avirbach, Barak. "Medieval Hebrew Insufficiency: Was it Such a Dramatic Deficiency?". The Seventeenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, The Hebrew University, August 6-10, 2017.

Dubiner, D. (2017). Intercultural Encounters in Israel: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Talk given in the scientific meeting “Multiculturalism, intercultural encounters and migration: us and them”. Instituto Universitario de Investigación de la Paz y los Conflictos Dept. of Semitic Studies. University of Granada, Spain. May 22-24, 2017.

Dubiner, D. (2016). Language in a Multicultural Reality. Invited talk and workshop, Safed Academic College, February 2016.

Dubiner, D. (2015).  Identity and multi-diversity reflected in the LL of a Druze town in Israel. Linguistic Landscape 7, May 7-9, UC  Berkeley, California.

Joffe, Susan. "An adult migration model of second language motivation" paper presentation at Conference on Multilingualism, Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism, University of Reading, June 23-25, 2020.

Joffe, Susan. "Identity, Motivation, and Language use among Spanish-Hebrew adult bilinguals in Israel" poster presentation at Scientific and Societal Contributions of Research in Multilingual and Multicultural Communities Conference, Bar Ilan University, June 4-6, 2018.

Joffe, Susan. "Immigration without integration: Ultra-orthodox immigrants to Israel" paper presentation at 11th International Symposium on Bilingualism, University of Limerick, Ireland, June 11-15, 2017.

Schwartz, Mila. “Creating Language-conducive Context in Preschool Multilingual Education” invited keynote speaker at the International Conference of Multilingual Awareness and Multilingual Practices, University of Tallinn, Estonia, November 22-24, 2018.

Schwartz, Mila. “Towards a Better Understanding of Child's Agentic Behavior in a Novel Language Learning” invited keynote speaker at the International Conference of Multilingual Childhoods: Education, Policy and Practice, University of Hamar, Norway, May 14-16, 2019.

Research Team ​
סוזו יופה  

susanjoffe@gmail.com

Susan Joffe is a researcher in undergraduate and graduate programs in Language and Education at Oranim Academic College of Education (Israel). Her research interests include bilingualism in children and adults, models of immigrant second language motivation, sociocultural influences on second language motivation in children, classroom discourse analysis, and research methods for studying adult immigrant populations. Her research has focused on child and adult immigrant populations from many language backgrounds, including English, Russian, French, and Spanish. Dr. Joffe is a member of Bilingualism Matters (Israel) and the board of the Benjamin Library, where she promotes multilingual literacy in children.


דבורה דובינר  

ddubiner@gmail.com

(Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition, Carnegie Mellon University) is a lecturer at Oranim Academic College of Education in Israel. Her teaching load is distributed in the graduate, undergraduate, in-service, and pre-service language teaching programs.  Her sociolinguistics research focuses on multilingualism and identity, heritage language maintenance, bilingual education, as well as varied topics in language, society, and education. She specializes also in second language acquisition/teaching and teacher education. She has taught foreign languages for over 25 years in three continents. Dr. Dubiner is a member of the International Association of Multilingualism..

מילה שוורץ  

milasch@bgu.ac.il


She received her first degree from the Pedagogical State University of Saint-Petersburg in Linguistics and Literature. She completed an MA and a PhD in the University of Haifa in Learning Disabilities and Literacy Development among Bilingual and Trilingual Children, conducted her Post-Doc studies in Ben-Gurion University, Israel (the Kreitman Foundation Fellowships), and in Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of University of Toronto.

Her research interests include studying language policy and models of early bilingual education; linguistic, cognitive, and socio-cultural development of early sequential bilinguals; family language policy; and bilingual teachers' pedagogical development. In this research her focus is on two unique populations: second generation Russian-Hebrew speaking immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Arabic and Hebrew-speaking children enrolled in bilingual bi-national education in Israel. She managed many research projects and published over 60 empirical papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and book chapters.


ברק אוירבך  

barak380@gmail.com

Barak Avirbach is a researcher in undergraduate program in the Hebrew Language department and in the graduate program in Hebrew as a second language at Oranim Academic College (Israel). He is an academic member of the ministry of education's Hebrew for Arab schools profession committee. His research interests and publications include Medieval Hebrew, Arabized Hebrew, the mutual influence of Medieval Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic, paleographic, philology, lexicography and grammar, as well as rhetoric, linguistic characteristics of literature in general and songs and poems in particular, and the facilitating of songs and poems in language teaching.
בהאא מחול  

Dr. Baha Makhoul received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jersulem, investigating Arabic reading acquisition. She has finished her Post-doctoral studies, examining the characteristics of skilled and poor readers among Arabic native speaking children, in 2010 in the department for learning disabilities at the University of Haifa. Currently, she is a senior lecture and researcher at Oranim Academic College and until  2020  serving as a senior academic consultant at the NCJW (Research Institute for Innovation in Education)– The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
And senior researcher in Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities - Haifa University
Since 2007, she has been serving as the head for  Arabic language section  at the Center for Educational technology (CET).
Dr. Makhoul is currently cooperating with both national and international leading researches in the field of literacy, Digital /Madia Literacy and education

Main research interests:
Literacy
Reading acquisition: A focus on Arabic language
The integration of technology in literacy, teacher education and blended learning
Remedial literacy programs
Academic language development
Bridging research-acquired knowledge and insights from the educational field
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