Folk stories and social identification in multilingual classrooms

This paper considers the processes of using folk stories for the teaching of community languages in a UK complementary school. We look at the appropriation of folk stories by teachers to teach young people Mandarin while also considering their possibilities as heritage texts. We consider how the teacher and students use the folk story as curriculum resource for learning and teaching language as well as cultural heritage. We describe the language use of the teacher and young people during a folk story literacy event and demonstrate how biliteracy and bilingualism are used to question and endorse particular renditions of the folk story as a heritage text suitable for language teaching and learning.