Child Language Brokering: la percezione degli studenti di origine straniera e dei rispettivi insegnanti

In the last decades Italy has been undergoing large migratory waves and Italian schools have been reporting the highest numbers of multilingual students coming from immigrant families and speaking minority languages. These multilingual immigrant students may be asked to act as translators or mediators for their peers or family members who do not speak Italian fluently, thus contributing to the practice defined as Child Language Brokering (CLB). This paper will present the results of a research carried out during the school year 2014-15 in the province of Ravenna, among 27 teachers and 126 immigrant students attending four junior high schools. The aim of the study is to analyse by means of structured questionnaires whether multilingualism matches with language brokering experiences or not, to examine teachers’ opinions about this activity and the perspectives of those students who reported having acted as translators using their linguistic knowledge to help people understand each other.