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The paper presents a genre-based approach to the study of negotiation within EAP classes and reports on results obtained using a negotiation model meant to increase students' awareness concerning the generic features of this communicative activity. The presented model is based on the Pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, which offers a double perspective on the argumentation discourse analysed, namely a descriptive and normative perspective. The paper, based on desk and field research, aims to help business language students improve their abilities in argumentation and negotiation by developing discourse skills beyond a simple stage by stage negotiation strategy. In order to do so it examines the advantages and disadvantages of traditional teaching of negotiation skills and introduces the Pragma-dialectical theory of negotiation developed by van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992) at the University of Amsterdam. The author demonstrates how the practical application of this approach has improved the performance of MA students in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the example of foreign languages to explore the integration of critical information literacy into the curriculum of various disciplines. By closely examining the practices and values inherent in the foreign language information environment, the paper suggests that a critical vision of information literacy provides the most appropriate approach to help meet campus goals of educating students for transcultural competence. As such, the paper provides an example of the process and role of the librarian in integrating critical information literacy into disciplinary fields and proposes that this approach could be effective in global learning initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pretérito Perfeito Composto do Indicativo (present perfect) is a tense that typically exhibits an iterative reading in European Portuguese that does not arise in similar constructions pertaining to other languages. In this paper, we intend to identify the conditions under which this iterative reading arises and to present a formal account grounded on its temporal, aspectual and quantificational features. In fact, the rise of the iterative reading depends on the temporal perspective point and on the basic aspectual class of the predication. Furthermore, there are clear restrictions concerning the quantification operators in the direct object and in the temporal adjuncts that occur in the scope of the relevant predication. Thus, taking as starting point the works of Van Geenhoven (2004) and Laca (2006), we propose that there is an operator underlying the Pretérito Perfeito Composto in European Portuguese that projects a basic eventuality into a collective eventuality of the same nature, constituted by the iteration of the basic eventuality. This proposal departs from others concerning the description of the Pretérito Perfeito Composto in that the collective eventuality created by this Portuguese tense is not a mere pluralisation of situations, but an entity ontologically superior, just like in the nominal domain a collective noun denotes an entity that is ontologically superior to the atomic entities that fall in its denotation. In the final part of this paper, we will address some topics concerning the conditions under which the non-iterative reading of the Pretérito Perfeito Composto arises and we will point out some topics for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kosovo's education system is divided along a Serb-Albanian line, with consequences for the non-Serb minorities. While Serb-Albanian relations have been researched and analyzed extensively, relations among non-Serb minority communities have typically been neglected. Although there are some studies addressing the treatment and rights of individual minority groups in Kosovo, there is very little written on the dynamics and relations those groups establish among themselves. This article uses education as the backdrop for analyzing the emerging inter-minority relations in Kosovo. The paper provides some background about minority education rights and the consequences of their partial implementation for those minority groups—i.e., the Kosovo Bosniaks and Turks—whose members opt to follow the Albanian (Kosovo) educational system. In addition, it offers insights into some of the economic and political considerations behind the decision of the Gorani community to endorse the Serbian educational system. Finally, I analyze the relations between the Goranis and Bosniaks that have been developing around education and language rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I look at three polemical issues in Applied Linguistics. I argue, first of all, that the desire for a stable definition of applied linguistics has by no means prevented research in the discipline. Secondly, I contend that the notion or "tradition" of "linguistics applied" (corpus linguistics or lexicography) is broader and more serious than "applicationism" (the use of linguistic formalisms, artificial practices, and terminology) in teaching material that are problematic and motivated by commercial interests. Thirdly, I argue that Educational Linguistics and Applied Linguistics have overlapping research objectives. In the course of the paper, I present some reservations about Educational Linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major study involving critical analysis of library and information science (LIS) education in Sri Lanka was carried out by the author covering the 2004-2007 period, and the equity of LIS education discussed in this paper was one element of the larger study. The study on equity has three objectives: (1) to provide a brief introduction to the LIS education programs and the institutions which offer those programs in Sri Lanka; (2) to analyze critically the equity of the LIS programs; and (3) to make recommendations for improvement. Four principal methods were used to collect the data required for the main research; semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, review of relevant documents, and participatory observations by the researcher. Four criteria, namely gender, income, geographic region and language, were used to analyze the equity of LIS education programs. Findings of the study established that there is a gender imbalance in the LIS programs with 80% to 90% female students, that an income inequity is evident, that there is a severe inequity in the regional distribution and language of the programs. The paper makes several recommendations to reduce these inequities and makes suggestions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to show the difference between literal and non literal language, and emphasizes the fact that both of them are used in the everyday language. The literal language does not present any difficulty for the listener to understand it because it only uses a decoding process to reach the semantic level of the language. The metaphorical language, in opposition, not only needs to be decoded but requires the listener to develop inferential processes that let him understand what the speaker means by that statement in that specific moment of the communication; that is to say, the listener needs a pragmatic knowledge given to him by the context, the speaker and his intentions to understand the utterer's meaning. This paper shows how the cognition and the thought formation processes are achieved specially through the use of the metaphorical language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses findings of a study that investigated Malawian students' meanings for some probability vocabulary. The study explores the meanings that, prior to instruction, students assign to some words that are commonly used in teaching probability. The aim is to have some insight into the meanings that students bring to the classroom. The sample for the study consisted of 154 students in their first year of secondary school education and whose first language was Chichewa. The paper demonstrates that many of the students' preconceived meanings for probability vocabulary were distant from established conventional probability meanings. In addition, there was a wide range of meanings associated with each of the words. An attempt is made to analyse the students' meanings and to explain their possible sources, some of which are rooted in the students' first language. The paper highlights the importance of having an awareness of students' preconceived meanings, and also stresses the importance of language in learning probability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports a six-weeks-lasting research run into two mainstream primary classrooms settled in the border municipalities of Trieste and Koper, representing the initial stage of a wider study which aim is the development of a methodological framework in order to introduce systematic virtual and face-to-face cross-border contacts into the teaching and learning of Neighbouring Languages (NL) in mainstream border area primary schools. At this phase, beyond an embryonic investigation about pupils' language behaviour in multilingual learning context, there have been tested the "face-to-face encounter" feasibility between involved classrooms and virtual network efficacy. Results have shown evidence of feasibility as well as the cross border primary schools contacts positive influences on attitudes and pupils' learning NL language behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the media competence conceptualization and its treatment in curricula at Primary Schools of Colombia and Spain. We specifically focus the language area, because it is one of the most related area to the development of media competence. We propose a revision of the situation in both countries from a series of dimensions, with the aim to check whether the proposed curriculum of each country ensures or enhances the development of media competence and determine which dimensions are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the way in which a training process, in which the methodological option approaches an action-research in teacher education, contributes with the elaboration of teaching knowledge in sciences by a group of teachers of the initial school years. In colaborative situations of teaching knowledge, those teachers elect education problems, for which they seek for solutions through planned, developed and reflected actions. We explored data obtained from a wide research, realized in a public school which took as basis this formative process. The results analysed under a qualitative approach show that the action-research contributes with the elaboration of the teaching knowledge, creating situations of learning necessary to the organization and development of education. We identified important knowledge related to indicating elements of learning about teaching, such as self-organization and formation, the disposition to study and to research, a way to teach sciences through investigative activities, the construction of cooperative practice at school, the articulation of science teaching with the alphabetization process in the native language, the consideration of the school's social and cultural context in its teaching plans, among others. Those results take us to reinforce the potential of action-research on teacher's formation and on the improvement of the practiced teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents data from external tests applied by the Secretary of Education, relating to curricular component of Portuguese language. The study was conducted with basic education students from the sixth to the ninth year in the years of 2011 and 2012. It was an ethnographic research with quantitative and qualitative approach, placed in a municipal public school with one thousand and two hundred students distributed in the morning, afternoon and night periods. The goal was to identify the weaknesses in the students' learning and the strategies used by the school in order to correct them. The article will discuss the methodological strategies used by teachers, courses offered by the school and the indices presented by the external assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-colonial Africa was neither an educationally nor a technologically unsophisticated continent. While education was an integral part of the culture, issues of language identification and standardisation which are subject to contentious debate today were insignificant. Children learned community knowledge and history by asking questions instead of being taught in a hegemonic alien language. This article argues that education and development should take place in a broader context of human rights, and explores the links between three areas often dealt with separately, namely: language, education and development. The authors of this paper demonstrate that changing the face of the multi-dimensionalities of poverty within societies is possible only when education is constructed in a rights perspective over the favoured colonial languages, which are not an integral part of the culture and resources of a community. The authors make a distinction between the right to education and rights in education, the latter of which are found to be more significant for the challenges Africa faces. It is argued here that the elements of Amartya Sen's 'threshold' conditions for inclusion in human rights and self-development in education are essential, and that a more promising architecture of education would include what the authors term meta-narrative frameworks, i.e. interrelated policies. The authors contend that the neoliberal commodification of the knowledge sector has only exacerbated human rights and capabilities deprivation - which encompasses both human and income poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Language for Specific Purposes approach presupposes velocity, the sociodiscursive interactionism theory (BRONCKART, 2003; 2006; 2008; SCHEUWLY; DOLZ, 2004) postulates a processual work, organized in didactic sequences which aim at the development of language capacities necessary to act in particular contexts. This perspective requires several hours of study focused on a given textual genre to ensure the comprehension of language as a social practice and of text as a semiotic instrument, which allows effective verbal communication in singular situations. Aligned with this perspective, the challenges of this paper are to analyze and illustrate possible and necessary adjustments in the Swiss proposal that can be applied to the learning-teaching process of languages for specific purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2010, the British Columbia Ministry of Education introduced an updated version of its international languages curricula titled Additional Languages (AL) draft curriculum which set out a clear articulation of the province's language education as conceived and developed over the past 15 years. The strength of the draft curriculum lies in its emphasis on plurilingualism as a guiding pedagogical principle, a response to recent recommendations of the Council of Ministers of Canada to adopt the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) in a Canadian context. The CEFR framing has been retained in the latest revision of the AL draft curriculum, the 2011 French curriculum, which has recently replaced the original 2010 draft document. Despite this latest revision, the original AL draft curriculum maintains historical relevance for language education in BC by highlighting the province's linguistic diversity and the choice to value more than one language in different ways. In its original conception, the AL draft curriculum operationalized the recognition of linguistic plurality within an officially bilingual context and thus represented a concrete attempt to acknowledge the very dynamic language practices of British Columbians. In this paper we examine how the draft curriculum sought to negotiate historical, political, cultural, and linguistic questions with regard to language education in BC, by first considering the historical development of BC language education within the context of official bilingualism, followed by a thematic discourse analysis of the document text to highlight the clearest yet also most challenging articulation of plurilingual language education in BC to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to discuss the importance of enunciation studies to the Portuguese language teaching. The issue has arisen due to the fact that there is almost an exclusive use of the normative grammar in the grounds of language studies during basic education. It is known, however, that this prioritization has not made students profi cient readers or writers, and it goes against the content of PCNs (National (Brazilian) Curricular Parameters), whose recommendations for the Portuguese language teaching are defi ned by the focus on developing skills and abilities for the concrete use of language. Thus the language, understood here through its use, in the interaction between interlocutors, gains the status of producing new meanings, and, therefore, gains an enunciation "view" and must be considered and taught by this principle. Finally, Emile Benveniste's Theory of Enunciation, which is considered fundamental in enunciation studies about the language, provides the principles for the treatment of language in use, or better, in a given situation that requires the categories of subject, time and space. Therefore, the theoretical foundations of Benveniste's enunciation respond to what the PCNs recommend concerning the Portuguese language teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I render the organizational practices of an American state green party. These practices are discussed not from the perspective of organizational theory, but from the perspective of critical cultural analysis. I attempt to construct a green cosmology, into which I situate the party's practices when contextualizing them, in order to indicate how ideology influences green organizational behaviors. In the ethnographic accounts, I interpose analyses; sometimes comparing the greens to larger discursive structures. I make the case that the green worldview is immured in the same premises and implicit assumptions that structure other American political forms. These commonalities result in the same methodological prescriptions for political praxis. Therefore, to a significant degree, the greens conform to the system that they are consciously working to alter. By largely submitting to the processes of the political system that they seek to change, greens are disposed to become the very political structure that they reflexively focus on as the target demanding their interdiction in an attempt to engender its alteration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As robot technologies develop, many researchers have tried to use robots to support education. Studies have shown that robots can help students develop problem-solving abilities and learn computer programming, mathematics, and science. However, few studies discuss the use of robots to facilitate the teaching of second languages. We discuss whether language teaching needs robot support, whether robots present an appropriate medium for language instruction, and what challenges must be overcome. In order to explore the possibility of using robots as an instructional tool for teaching a second language, this paper reviews prior studies concerning educational robots and analyzes the characteristics of robots and instructional media. Furthermore, we report on the design and testing of five instruction scenarios for teaching second language. Based on our empirical experience, we provide suggestions for future research directions in the realm of robots for language education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, local and European education policies concerning bilingualism are reviewed. A number of concepts are used regarding the learning of a second language as educational method. Then, neuro-psychological processes underlying bilingualism are reviewed. Finally, their implications for learning a second language are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study asserts that it is impossible to have a meaningful education if there is no understandable medium of teaching. The issue brought about by Article 14 which states in the 1987 Constitution that Filipino is the National Language was further intensified. Cebu revolted when the former minister of Education enforced that Filipino should be used as a medium of teaching in all schools, in all the regions. This paper aims to describe the significant relationship between class & reality, language & sensibility in achieving a meaningful education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Philippines is experiencing a major complex. When something is deemed Filipino, we treat it as low class. We thought that the whole world would praise us, especially those from Asia if we are speaking in English. We don't realize that they are laughing at us, because even if we are good in English, we don't know our own language. Until we have overcome this complex, we can only be praised at our faces but be laughed at our backs. Each intellectual in our country should give his contribution for the national effort towards Filipinization. Only through this, could we say that the professionals have a great responsibility in achieving a meaningful educational policy. This paper discusses the significant relationship of a national language in achieving an education truly for the Filipinos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the background to the Chinese government's decision to embark on a programme of promoting the study of Chinese language and culture overseas. This includes the impact of Joseph Nye's concept of ‘soft power’ in China, ownership of the national language, the Confucius connection, and how these factors interact with political legitimacy. It also considers the development of the Confucius Institute programme in Europe. Europe has the greatest number of Confucius Institutes of any region: what should be read into this? What impact are these institutes having on the development of Chinese language education in Europe at different levels of the educational system? The paper provides some data on recent developments, outlines some of the obstacles to further progress and assesses the chances of Chinese becoming a global language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the linguistic complexity of East Timor. Portuguese and Tetum (the national language) are the official languages. To develop education, other languages such as English and Indonesian are necessary. A law on education has to back the Constitution drafted in 2001 to develop education an important tool of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philippine Education undertook a revision of the (tertiary) Filipino (language) curriculum to maximize student learning and meet the more complex demands of local/global citizens. This paper examines the extent towhich the Filipino curriculum is able to answer the needs of each student in learning and using Filipino as a national language ~to promote literacy, development and progress, and national unity and identity. Curricular revision takes a positive direction as our national language Filipino keeps apace with national/global issues and concerns and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since their political reorientation that started in the late 1980s, the Baltic states have experienced profound social reforms to rebuild their democratizing societies. Education has featured as a key vehicle to this transformation process of overcoming the limitations of the Soviet past. National legislative frameworks were therefore soon provided to restructure educational systems and allow for 'liberal' approaches to schooling. The process of policy-making for a new concept of education, however, entailed numerous challenges, and it has resulted in a diverse tapestry of educational provision across the Baltic. With specific focus on minority education, this paper presents a comparative analysis of education policies and practices in contemporary Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in response to emerging language needs in these intensely multiethnic settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces the "News & Notes of the Profession" column of the "Modern Language Journal." This section welcomes reader contributions on such information as calendar of events, professional announcements and professional initiatives and concerns. However, the section is not just limited to those kinds of information. For calendar of events, information must be sent at least one year before the event's schedule. Announcements include calls for papers, requests for proposals, and grants received. Organizations must observe submission deadlines and procedures for there is a six-month lead time for the appearance of an item.

The editorial announces that the this issue will be the last under the current editor. The author discusses the last five years of the editorship and provides an overview of the issues published over the period. The issues include major topics in dyslexia education addressed in a number of papers: dyslexia in different languages and writing systems, teachers' experience in language and reading, longitudinal studies of brain behavior, rapid automatized naming, assistive speech technology and other issues.

Let X be a finite alphabet containing more than one letter. A dense language over X is a language containing a disjunctive language. A language L is an n-dense language if for any distinct n words $$w_1, w_2, \ldots,w_n \in X^+,$$ there exist two words $$u, v \in X^*$$ such that $$uw_1v, uw_2v, \ldots uw_nv \in L.$$ In this paper we classify dense languages into strict n-dense languages and study some of their algebraic properties. We show that for each n ≥ 0, the n-dense language exists. For an n-dense language L, n ≠ 1, the language L ∩ Q is a dense language, where Q is the set of all primitive words over X. Moreover, for a given n ≥ 1, the language L is such that $$L \cap Q\in D_n(X)$$ , then $$L\in D_m(X)$$ for some m, n ≤ m ≤ 2 n + 1. Characterizations on 0-dense languages and n-dense languages are obtained. It is true that for any dense language L, there exist $$w_1\neq w_2\in X^+$$ such that $$uw_1v,uw_2v\in L$$ for some $$u,v\in X^\ast$$ . We show that every n-dense language, n ≥ 0, can be split into disjoint union of infinitely many n-dense languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The full potential of discussion groups to further geographic interest in the relationship between discourse, individual and society can still be developed further. This paper briefly reviews previous applications of discussion group methodologies before suggesting a new discourse-centred approach that explores how broad social discourses impact everyday conversations. The approach is demonstrated through a case study involving supporters of environmental movements in Australia. It is concluded that small groups can be used in new ways that provide important methodologically unique insights into the reception of transient, but powerful, discourses upon everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many ‘alternative primary education’ programmes operating in the developing parts of the world use children’s first language as the medium of instruction. Programme sponsors often base their vernacular language policy on literature that highlights the cognitive and other benefits that accrue from using children’s first languages as the medium of instruction during their early stages in school. Working within a postcolonial discursive framework the paper examines the attitudes of community members, parents, school authorities and schoolchildren toward the use of the vernacular as a medium of instruction in the Shepherd School Programme, an alternative primary education programme, that has been implemented to provide improved educational access for schoolchildren in seven rural northern Ghanaian agri-pastoral communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on ethnographic case-study research conducted amongst a group of first and second generation immigrant children in six inner-city schools in London. It focuses on language attitudes and language choice in relation to cultural maintenance, on the one hand, and career aspirations on the other. It seeks to provide insight into some of the experiences and dilemmatic choices encountered and negotiations engaged in by transmigratory groups, how they define cultural capital, and the processes through which new meanings are shaped as part of the process of defining a space within the host society. Underlying this discussion is the assumption that alternative cultural spaces in which multiple identities and possibilities can be articulated already exist in the rich texture of everyday life amongst transmigratory groups. The argument that whilst the acquisition of 'world languages' is a key variable in accumulating cultural capital, the maintenance of linguistic diversity retains potent symbolic power in sustaining cohesive identities is a recurring theme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational language choice has been one of the most provocative issues of the 20th century and continues to be a dominant issue at the turn of the new millennium. Efforts to naturalize English as the only suitable language for post primary school education persist in many African countries, including Tanzania. In the United States the campaign for "English only" in the schools is gaining momentum, despite the increasing multilingual population in the schools. Focusing on Tanzania and the United States, this article examines the fallacy of a monolingual, English only, policy in education. It examines the ethos surrounding the debate about the language of instruction, and considers some of the detrimental effects upon students of attempting to impose a monolingual policy. Finally, the paper suggests possible roles of educators and researchers in fostering international understanding of educational language issues as one aspect of the quest for global peace and social justice in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the internal migratory response, by native-born non-Hispanic white men and foreign-born men in the United States, to recent immigration. Our analysis does not support the claim that natives have made a migratory response to recent immigration. Native-born men and foreign-born men were less likely to leave states that received large numbers of immigrants in the 1980s than they were to leave other states, and native-born men had less propensity toward out-migration than did foreign-born men. Out-migration was most likely to be deterred if recent immigrants originated in Europe or Asia. Although native-born non-Hispanic white men showed a tendency toward out-migration if recent immigrants originated in Latin America or the Caribbean, this result was insignificant after we controlled for state economic and regional context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been much comment on the value-laden and particularly political nature of language and literacy and the manner in which literacy is embedded in particular socio-cultural systems. It is argued here that the non-neutrality of literacy is evident in the contemporary positioning of adult language and literacy instruction within the rhetoric of current employment-related concerns These concerns privilege a particular vision of the workplace and workforce and these ideas have become embedded in competency-based language and literacy schemata. In this paper, assumptions regarding the nature of workers' participation in the 'new' workplace in such schemata are identified. In particular, the degree to which the vision of participation, as measured by specified language and literacy competence for the workplace, is likely to be shared by Aboriginal Australians in both remote and settled Australia is considered. Related factors impinging on adult Aboriginal acquisition and demonstrations of language and literacy competence in this context are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few accounts of how sociology of education as a specialist sub-discipline has developed in other parts of Europe are available in the English-language professional literature, but these may be helpful not only as information in itself but also as a stimulus to critical reflection upon the history and contemporary positioning of the field in Britain In this paper, sociology of education in the Federal Republic of Germany offers an exemplar for the potential insights that may be gained from such accounts A 'natural history' of the emergence of the field is used to explore three topics relationships between sociology and education as disciplines of knowledge, images of sociology of education as a force for social and political progress, and the question of schooling as the core thematic focus of the field Notable differences between German and British sociology of education are clarified in the process, but equally questions are raised about the taken-for-granted in professional self-image [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an abstract of the paper "Market Rhetoric and the Ebonics Debate," by M. G. Longaker, published in the 2005 issue of the journal "Written Communication." This paper explains the adoption of market rhetoric in conversations about education. It also describes how rhetorical analysis can help educators understand how local language practices influence their interaction with education-related changes.

This article presents the author's reflections on this 2004 issue of The Modern Language Journal. The outgrowth of the 2003 annual meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics is the current special issue devoted to conversation analysis (CA) approaches for SLA in classroom settings. Reviewers were enthusiastic about the papers individually and about the challenge that, as a whole, they pose to the profession: to consider a paradigm used primarily in other areas of applied linguistics for research in SLA. It is clear that we have yet to recognize fully a clear place for CA among qualitative methods applied widely to SLA studies. The tradition of SLA inquiry is to understand a learner's problems with language. CA focuses on the learner's orientation to problems in the talk. As the articles in this special issue illustrate, like the borders of SLA inquiry, the borders of CA are also being challenged: to stretch beyond the strict confines of the talk in order to consider influences from the backgrounds of the learners and the wider, ethnographic context of their verbal interactions. In fact, publishing CA data presented a formatting challenge to the journal, whose double-column format is not conducive to large transcripts of talk, especially in a CA framework that requires overlapping talk to be clerealy noted and often shown with parallel lines of transliterations, literal interpretations, or more general translations.

The article introduces the "Perspectives" section of the "Modern Language Journal." In this issue, two guest editors assumed editorial responsibility. They were Robert Blake of the University of California (UC) in Davis, California and Claire Kramsch of the UC in Berkeley, California. Blake and Kramsch collaborated in planning and hosting the University of California Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching at UC Berkeley in October 2005. Conference papers offered various viewpoints from all sectors of the academy and the government.