Search

Despite research suggesting that teachers highly influence their students' knowledge and use of language learning resources such as dictionaries (Loucky, 2005; Yamane, 2006), it appears that dictionary selection and use is considered something to be dealt with outside the classroom. As a result, many students receive too little advice to be able to make informed choices about which dictionary to use for which task. In particular, while teachers may recommend a few paper dictionaries, it appears that little thought is given to electronic and online alternatives. This article uses the case of (English) alphabet-background students of Japanese as an example, and discusses the pros and cons of computer versus non-computer dictionary tools, based on a survey of available resources, and making reference to empirical case studies of students and their dictionary use. The article concludes with recommendations for teachers and students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second language studies have supported the use of glossing for enhancing vocabulary learning. Along with technological developments, an increasing number of studies have examined electronic textual glossing in computer-assisted environments, yet only a small number of studies have compared electronic glossing to its traditional paper counterpart. In the present study, we examined the effectiveness of electronic and paper textual glosses on second language vocabulary learning and reading comprehension within a cognitive load theory framework. We adopted an experimental design using Korean undergraduate learners of English as a foreign language, who read a target text under one of the three reading conditions: electronic gloss, paper gloss, and no gloss. The results showed that the electronic glossing condition resulted in the greatest gains of vocabulary. The electronic glossing condition was also the most efficient in light of the cognitive load framework, showing the highest instructional efficiency. However, there were no significant differences among the three reading conditions for measures related to reading comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study is a corpus-based lexical study that aims to explore the use of words in Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List (AWL) in journal articles in the field of applied linguistics. A 1.5 million-word corpus called the Applied Linguistics Research Articles Corpus (ALC) was created for this study. The corpus consists of 200 research articles that have been published in five applied linguistics journals, namely, Applied Linguistics, Language Learning, The Modern Language Journal, Second Language Research, and TESOL Quarterly. Results show that AWL words account for 11.17% of the entire ALC. Using both frequency and range as the criteria for word forms selection, this study identifies 475 AWL and 128 non-AWL word forms that are used more than 50 times in the ALC and at least five times across the five journals. Most of the AWL word forms belong to the word families included in Coxhead’s first and second sublists. The non-AWL word forms are specialized terms in applied linguistics, terms related to language education and research methodology, and adjectives/nouns indicating countries/languages. Pedagogical implications are made for both teachers and learners of academic English as a foreign language. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A call for papers with the theme Teaching English in the Two-Year College in a Time of War is presented.

The article presents the discussion on papers from TESOL experts, researchers, and practitioners based not only in China but also in other countries including Canada, the UK, and the USA. Topics include using a wide variety of approaches, ranging from experimental designs, corpus-based methods, survey-based studies, case studies, to mix-methods research; and revealing further benefits of formative assessment such as enhancement of logical thinking and promotion of self-regulated learning.

This paper reports on the outcomes of a study on stakeholder perspectives on catering for diversity in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in Spain. It is part of the large-scale SWOT analysis conducted in Europe within the project 'CLIL for All: Attention to Diversity in Bilingual Education (ADiBE)'. The research has involved the administration of two sets of questionnaires to 926 informants (742 students and 184 teachers) within 15 secondary schools of four provinces. After framing the topic against the backdrop of the project, the paper will expound on the objectives, methodology, variables, and procedure employed in this particular study in Spain. The bulk of the article will outline its main findings in relation to the five main fields of interest which have been canvassed: linguistic aspects, methodology and types of groupings, materials and resources, assessment, and teacher coordination and development. Across-group comparisons will be carried out to determine whether there are statistically significant differences between both cohorts. A diagnosis of where we currently stand in Spain in the process of catering for diversity in CLIL will be provided in light of these results and a future CLIL agenda will be carved out on the basis of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curricular articulation and the integration of cultural knowledge with language development over extended sequences are among the most persistent challenges for contemporary language teaching and learning. The paper examines the nature of those challenges in light of theories of language and culture while using as the site of investigation the culture standards that have been developed within the framework of the Standards for Foreign Language Learning, a key document for L2 education in the United States, particularly at the K-12 level. Taking four perspectives, it suggests ways in which simultaneous content and language teaching might be tackled through a genre-based way of constructing extended curricula and by using genre-based tasks for informing pedagogical decisions. In this fashion, learners might be able to progress toward a competent cultural literacy that is language-based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a call for papers related to language planning including the sociocultural complexity, language education, and educational policy.

Copyright of International Journal of Language Academy is the property of Rota Kariyer and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the first paper inaugurating this journal, Bernard Spolsky makes a case for critical educational linguistics. Reviewing both the critical tradition going back to the Frankfurt School and many of the strands of work that can be seen as part of critical applied linguistics, he concludes that there is an important role for critical educational linguistics as long as it follows in the liberal tradition and avoids so-called wokeism. He also argues that a great deal of work in support of language diversity and bilingualism has in any case been in this critical tradition, and that the addition of the term may not add much to what has gone before. Building on this proposal for critical educational linguistics, this paper raises concerns about basing a critical educational linguistic project on liberal foundations, invoking ideas such as 'wokeism,' or assuming a long history of critical work in mainstream educational linguistics. The paper concludes by suggesting alternative foundations for critical educational linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes available to the broader educational community the instruments which have been originally designed and validated within the European project CLIL for all: Attention to diversity in bilingual education (ADiBE) to determine how diversity is being catered to across a broad array of CLIL contexts in European Secondary Education (Austria, Finland, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom). They include three sets of questionnaires, interviews, and observation protocols and are qualitative and quantitative instruments whose design has been based on the latest research and which have undergone a carefully controlled double-fold pilot process for their validation (external ratings approach and pilot phase with a representative sample of 264 subjects). The questions included in the three sets of instruments are initially characterized, together with their format and main categories. The paper then details the steps undertaken for their research-based design and the double-fold pilot process followed for their validation. The questionnaires and interview and observation protocols are then presented in a format which is directly applicable in any CLIL classroom in order to determine the accessibility of bilingual programs for all types of achievers and to identify the chief difficulties and best practices in promoting inclusion in bilingual education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once upon a time, there were four skills. But what did it mean to be a listener? A speaker? A reader? A writer? Skills in a vacuum are useful neither for describing how well one uses language nor for how to teach it effectively. As the Standards were developed, the task force made an effort to look at related disciplines and to investigate how their methods might inform the teaching of second languages. As the discipline of communication was studied, the role of context became evident. For example, the speaker as rhetorician was quite distinct from the speaker in interpersonal or small group communication. The rules that governed those behaviors and the way students were taught to speak in these two situations differed considerably. What are the ramifications for how we look at communication in foreign languages? The answer is ‘The Framework of Communicative Modes’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue grew out of a symposium that I organized and chaired at the Tenth Conference of the European Association for Research into Learning and Instruction (EARLI), held in Padova, Italy from the 26–30 August 2003. The special issue was announced and papers called for over the mathematics education networks in the following way:Mathematics education is well established as a field of study in its own right. Researchers in this field draw on literature from psychology, sociology and anthropology to substantiate their theoretical positions but have also contributed to the development of theories and practices within the area of learning and teaching mathematics. Because of the interesting problems encountered in mathematics classrooms, mathematics education has provided a seductive area within which some of those in education, and other cognate disciplines, have sited their research. However, many such are unfamiliar with the substantial literature that now exists within mathematics education itself nor, despite considerable advancement in the field, necessarily cognisant of major disagreements, problems and contradictions that remain unresolved. Papers are invited that air and discuss ‘provocations’, drawing on established research and raising challenges to mathematics education and different approaches to such challenges within the field.I am delighted, therefore, to present this special issue consisting, as it does, of papers from across the spectrum of primary to tertiary education, with author representation from English-speaking countries across the world, and from the non-first language English countries of Italy, The Netherlands and Sweden. Authors have been encouraged to present their provocations in ways that are meaningful to the non-mathematics education community. This is in the hope of building bridges with those outside mathematics education who find the challenges of learning and teaching mathematics engaging but who are unaware of the kinds of debates ongoing within mathematics education and, in part, represented here.The issue consists of six articles together with a commentary paper on these that Phil Hodkinson of the Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Leeds was kind enough to write for it. By this means, I hope that the issue will not only offer readers of the journal some interesting, indeed provocative, ideas but also that the views on the papers, expressed by Phil Hodkinson, from the position of a generalist, will offer an additional take to engage readers.The first article in the issue is by colleagues Liz Bills and Chris Husbands, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. The title is ‘Values education in the mathematics classroom: subject values, educational values and one teacher's articulation of her practice’. The authors address the relationship between general social and values education, the development of which they call ‘the most important aim of schooling’, and mathematics education practice, one of the mechanisms through which this development is influenced. For those not engaged in mathematics education, there might be some surprises in the authors' references to the ways in which mathematics bears upon values issues and the ways in which they sensitively discuss one teacher's dilemmas in confronting the tensions between subject-specific, that is mathematical, and general values in her classroom.The second article, ‘Getting political and unraveling layers of gendered mathematical identifications’ is by Margaret Walshaw of Massey University, New Zealand. Margaret uses a post-structural analysis to draw attention to the politicization of knowledge and the ways that focusing upon ‘getting the analysis right’ can possibly lead to a failure to recognize that ‘hidden forms of social relations lie behind what our research participants tell us’. In this paper we meet Rachel, a senior secondary student of mathematics, who is attempting to deal with her mathematical identity and its gendering both in the classroom and in her relations with significant others. Through the format that Margaret has chosen to present her work, a split text strategy using the interview transcript and her analysis of the interview, she provokes the reader to reconsider constructions normally taken for granted in academic writing.Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, who is at the Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht University, The Netherlands but, at the time of writing, was a visiting professor at the University of Dortmund in Germany, poses the question: ‘Can scientific research answer the ‘what’ question of mathematics education?’ Marja begins by clearly articulating a contradiction that emerges from the papers of many who write about mathematics learning and teaching: ‘for outsiders mathematics may be a school subject with an indisputable content, but for those who are involved in mathematics education it is clearly not’. She points out that decisions on content are not even necessarily the same where approaches are shared, never mind where these differ and points to the consequent inadequacies of testing regimes. She asks does research help to find an answer to the question of what should be taught, a question which policy-makers and politicians, as well as the general public, recognize as most important but about which there is apparently little agreement. She develops her argument through published work and concludes that research not only must address this question; she proposes that the European approach to the didactics of mathematics is one way of doing so.A team, consisting of Ferdinando Arzarello, Ornella Robutti and Luciana Bazzini, from the University of Torino in Italy, are the authors of the next paper entitled ‘Acting is learning: focus on the construction of the mathematical concepts’. They move to the primary school where, in a particular classroom with a specific problem, they investigate the interaction between language, gesture and representational artefacts that support pupils' construction and understanding of meaning associated with variable and function. The provocation that they offer to practitioners is to acknowledge and build upon these interactions. To those who assert this important relationship between action, language and cognition, they offer a further provocation to foster ‘its transposition in school practice’. The authors critique the symbolic–reconstructive mode of learning that underlies transmission teaching and support an approach that promotes involvement in activities that help to build an experiential base for learning. They draw attention, in particular, to the role of technological artefacts. However, as they point out, artefacts, alone, are insufficient to promote learning; as we know, learning depends upon the sensitive understanding and use of these artefacts made by the teacher and students in interaction. Herein lies the provocation to practitioners.The fifth paper comes from Ulla Runesson, a member of the phenomenographic school of educational research associated with Gothenburg University, in Sweden. Her paper is called ‘Beyond discourse and interaction. Variation: a critical aspect for teaching and learning mathematics’. She utilizes transcripts from respected published work to demonstrate the different insights that can be obtained by the application of variation theory, a theory of learning that draws attention to the object that is necessary for learning to take place and the need to vary the learner's encounters with this object. She calls for this kind of eclectic approach to broaden perspectives on research data and research publications and points out that ‘by comparing analyses of the same data from different theoretical positions I have addressed the “provocation” created by the relationship between theoretical positions and findings of research in mathematics education. I have been proposing an alternative theoretical position, that of variation theory, for examining classroom learning in mathematics due to its power to reveal what can be learned’.The final paper, ‘Rethinking the tertiary mathematics curriculum’, by Peter Petocz and Anna Reid at Macquarie University in Australia, moves into university studies but focuses on the perspectives of the students, how they understand the nature of mathematics and its role in their future professional lives, and how this impacts upon their learning while at university. The authors' intent is to provoke a debate on the aims and nature of the tertiary mathematics curriculum. After examining a range of data from studies on student perspectives, they conclude by summarizing the impact on curriculum development and review, from the points of view of the institution, the students' professional preparation and learning needs, the coherence of the individual units that comprise a course, and the teaching and learning strategies incorporated in the classroom. They draw the conclusion that ‘students at university level will have some ideas about their future work, but they are not generally aware of the relation between these ideas and their conceptions of their subject, learning in the subject, and their overall approach to their studies. If we discuss these ideas with them, we can make explicit the relationship between narrower and broader views of professional work and limiting and integrated conceptions of learning in a subject’. This is, indeed, a provocation to many of those currently teaching mathematics at tertiary level.In his commentary paper, ‘Learning as cultural and relational: moving past some troubling dualisms’, Phil Hodkinson identifies similarities and differences in the six papers. He finds, not unexpectedly in an issue devoted to provocations, that the papers share an approach to mathematics education that is potentially contentious; it is broad, situated, embraces complexity and the role of values and purposes. Despite being situated within mathematics education, he finds that the papers embrace broad pedagogic perspectives that have the teacher in a central position. But these are not papers within a positivist or neo-realist position. All recognize the multi-variate, relational and complex nature of research in this field and look to interpretive research to help understand the influences at work. Underlining this, Phil Hodkinson reflects upon a number of dualisms that pervade a lot of academic writing, in particular but not only within mathematics education, and ways in which he perceives the papers in this Issue as challenging them. The dualisms he addresses are mind/body, individual/social, process/product and formality/informality of learning. This thought provoking paper concludes with a similar appeal to the one that I made at the outset for us as researchers in education, first, and mathematics education second, to turn our backs on Balkanization and engage with the issues and challenges that we jointly face building upon the contributions that are there to be found in the discipline-specific, as well as the generalist, literatures.While I hoped that Phil Hodkinson would do the kind of job that he has done, I cannot say that I expected the thorough, challenging and extremely interesting paper that he has provided, for which I am extremely grateful. In conclusion, I would also like to thank all the other authors represented here for their willing attention to detail and reactions to critique as well as the colleagues who acted as reviewers of papers for this special issue. Without their work, I would not have been able to produce an issue that, I hope, will be of interest and challenge to readers. In addition to members of the Editorial Board of the journal, thanks to Mike Askew, Mary Barnes, Bill Barton, Alan Bishop, Suzanne Damarin, Ed Dubinsky, Kathleen Lynch, John Mason, Anna Pendry and Hilary Povey and to Paula Peachey for her unstinting administrative support.Notes on contributorLeone Burton, the editor of this special issue, is Professor Emerita in Mathematics Education at the University of Birmingham and Visiting Professor at King's College, London. Her research interests span problem-solving, epistemology, assessment and social justice in mathematics classrooms from pre-school to university. Her most recent book is Mathematicians as enquirers: learning about learning mathematics (2004). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discusses various articles within the issue on topics including relation between educational linguistics and dialogic teaching; significance of students' metalanguage development; and pedagogy for contemporary grammar teaching.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a popular teaching approach that is being enthusiastically adopted across Japan (Ikeda, M. 2019. "CLIL in Comparison with PPP: A Revolution in ELT by Competency-Based Language Education." In Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning: The Case of Japan, edited by H. Reinders, R. Hayo, and S. Nakamura, 23–45. Palgrave Learning). CLIL is built on a 4Cs framework: Content, communication, cognition and culture (Coyle, D. 2007. "Content and Language Integrated Learning: Towards a Connected Research Agenda for CLIL Pedagogies." International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10 (5): 543–562), addressing and nurturing all four domains. While CLIL has since extended its tenets beyond the 4Cs and now adopts a more holistic, integrated, multimodal pluriliteracies perspective (Meyer, O., D. Coyle, A. Halbach, K. Schuck, and T. Ting. 2015. "A Pluriliteracies Approach to Content and Language Integrated Learning – Mapping Learner Progression in Knowledge Construction and Meaning-Making." Language, Culture and Curriculum 28 (1): 41–57; Meyer, O., and D. Coyle. 2017. "Pluriliteracies Teaching for Learning: Conceptualizing Progression for Deeper Learning in Literacies Development." European Journal of Applied Linguistics 5 (2): 199–222), the 4Cs ideals are still integral in understanding CLIL, and in this paper the author extends its importance and suggests the addition of the fifth C, that of criticality. Without the fifth C, CLIL remains a contentious teaching approach in Japan, given that it is framed within neoliberal goals and discourse. In the current framework, language is deemed largely as a tool that allows one to cultivate the four domains, assuring language/content learning and possibly socio-economic advancement. However, as is, incongruencies in ideologies and conceptualizations conveyed via different languages are not taken up sufficiently, and what's more, problematized and challenged. This paper addresses this lack and calls for the fifth C to make CLIL in Japan an even more robust, holistic and meaningful language teaching approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As increasingly more upper secondary schools mainstream bilingualism via an array of strategies, databases collecting students' appraisals of their bilingual experiences become invaluable for informing practice. This paper discusses how the ADiBE Interview Protocol was adapted to efficiently collect candid appraisals from 99 students attending a high school in highly monolingual southern Italy. Students welcomed the opportunity to shape their instruction, generating a database of commentaries from which 11 thematic issues emerged: three related to improved language competence, personal growth and general satisfaction, while eight themes called for attention to methods, materials, classroom management and even scheduling. Appraisals are presented, alongside brief discussions regarding implications for teacher-training, task-diversity, task-choice and translanguaging strategies for optimizing the shared L1 in monolingual classrooms. That said, appraisals also unveiled expectations for native-speaking English-fluent Content-experts, which, in contexts such as ours, is not only unrealistic, but depreciates Content-experts who, although may not be fluent in English, know content very well. Appraisals indicate that students appreciate the opportunity for receiving bilingual instruction and are willing to put in extra work to learn 'complex upper secondary content through a foreign language', a challenge they feel could be rendered more manageable via more learner-centred, language-aware and inclusive pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Language Policy is the property of Liverpool University Press / Journals and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of European Journal of Language Policy is the property of Liverpool University Press / Journals and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper discusses language planning at a cross-border university (a Zimbabwean university) that offers academic programmes to the Kingdom of Swaziland in the Southern African region. The paper is situated within the micro-level language planning framework, and discusses language decisions that govern three areas of university business, namely: teaching and learning, research, and institutional administration. The following served as sources of data for the study: newspapers, the university website, observations of linguistic behaviour and practices around the university site in Swaziland, and one key informant interview (an interview conducted with a senior manager at the Swaziland campus of the university). The study's findings point to the fact that English is the language chosen to address the three thematic areas of teaching and learning, research, and institutional administration. This means that although the Kingdom of Swaziland has two co-official languages (English and Siswati), it is English that enjoys higher and more strategic visibility. Whilst at the macro (national) level, English and Siswati are co-official languages, the situation at the micro level (university level) shows that English is the chosen language of the three selected domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preceding set of papers has explored various aspects of the role of language in mathematics education. The papers reflect the work of individual contributors. An important part of our collaboration, however, has been the conversation between us. This paper reflects on aspects of that conversation, as we draw together some of the themes that have emerged during our work. In particular, we discuss some of the implications of our analyses for theory, policy, practice and inter-disciplinarity in mathematics education and applied linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the needs of an international workforce, English for Specific Purpose courses are being promoted in higher education, and instructors are turning to learning technology to help design the instruction. In this paper, a needs analysis was conducted to guide the design of the system, materials and activities for context-aware ubiquitous language learning (CAULL) and English for Fitness Purposes (EFP) in a fitness center as part of a Design-Based Research project. The data collection methods included on-site observations, semi-structured interviews, and a questionnaire. The participants included 82 undergraduate students, seven physical education (PE) instructors, and six non-PE faculty members who frequently used the fitness center. All data forms were then triangulated and analyzed. The results show that all three groups consistently agreed that they need receptive language skills as well as specific terminology for fitness. Furthermore, it was suggested that the oral communication skills for EFP learners should also be developed for sharing ideas, experience, and suggestions. They pointed out that vocabulary related to diverse topics such as warm-up and cool-down stretches, cardiovascular exercises, and weight training are needed. Furthermore, participants reported that the CAULL system should be hypermedia-based, and contain a portfolio and a user-friendly interface. The findings were used to develop a blue print for a CAULL system based on design principles. The findings are of interest to context-aware language learning researchers, instructional designers, and the field of English for Specific Purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of assessment orientated policy in 2016 marks a significant change in Scottish education as it will establish standardised national testing. Teachers in Gaelic medium education are well placed to offer insights as they have had considerable autonomy regarding assessment and this paper is the first to consider the impact of this specific reform in Scotland. Three linked themes emerged from thematic analysis based on focus group data. Participants were keen to discuss the climate regarding Gaelic medium education linking concerns with the ongoing reform of assessment policy. Policy and practice implications are discussed as well as the anticipated impact the assessments may have on pupils and teaching staff. This paper contributes to the understanding regarding the role of standardised tests in education and feeds into an understanding of policy development through the lens of immersion education highlighting uncertainties held by teachers when reform is underway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in formal Nuosu Yi language programmes has been waning in Liangshan, China, even though Nuosu Yi continues to be widely spoken among Yi residents. In this paper, we adopt Hornberger (2004. "The Continua of Biliteracy and the Bilingual Educator: Educational Linguistics in Practice." International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 7 (3): 155–171.)'s continua of biliteracy and a translanguaging perspective to explore this phenomenon, and draw on a qualitative study of Yi students' and their teachers' language practices in three schools. Data include observations of Yi students' and teachers' spoken practices both in casual interactions and formal classroom instruction, and photos of their formal and informal written practices. Findings revealed a literacy-oracy divide in formal Nuosu Yi education: written Nuosu Yi was prioritised at school but was not found to be widely used in daily life. By contrast, spoken Nuosu Yi, which was drawn on frequently by students and teachers in informal interactions, was largely excluded at school due to a highly standardised and literacy-focused institutional setting. The continua of biliteracy and translanguaging allowed a nuanced investigation into different kinds of language practices at school, showing how the existing communicative repertoire of the students was not considered to be an asset in formal education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the collaboration between the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the National Foreign Language Resource Center at the Iowa State University to address issues in foreign language education in the U.S. The partnership will also outline the plan of actions that will be undertaken by the foreign language profession. The plan were already discussed during the ACTFL Delegate Assembly and will be followed by a retreat at a conference center in Leesburg.

This paper presents a systematic review of selected studies' findings on some amaXhosa stakeholders' perspectives, attitudes and beliefs towards their mother tongue and its involvement in education in the Eastern Cape. The studies' methodologies were also briefly interrogated to determine the extent of participants' prior knowledge of and insight into, language related constitutional mandates, the language-in-education policy (LiEP) and mother tongue supported bilingual education and its benefits. The results of the reviews are combined with language related findings from Mini's (2016) dissertation study to demonstrate the presence of adequate positivity towards isiXhosa-in-education, along with English. Data collection for the said dissertation (Mini, 2016) was by means of individual and focus group interviews, as well as limited classroom observations. Data analysis was by the qualitative thematic analysis method as expatiated by Braun & Clarke (2006). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with the critical debate of the impact of languages in education, in private and government schools, in Pakistan, on participants' opportunities to construct social capital, an important dimension of intergenerational, relative poverty. The data from in-depth interviews of 32 participants, (secondary school final-year students and their same sex 5-6 years older siblings), reveal the growing significance of English, through the interplay of the language policy and languages in education in Pakistan, leading to hegemonic ideologies that constrict the opportunities for the government school participants to acquire the kind of social capital that may address social stratification and inequality. The paper offers insights into the nature of language-education and development relationship. With the use of Bourdieu's social critical theory, the paper captures the processes by which languages in education become implicated in restricting the social capital of the relatively poor. Findings revealed that the languages in education, within the current language policy transformed through mutual cognition and intersubjectivity into symbolic capital. This set off processes which constrict the social capital of the government school participants, creating social stratification, affecting collective agency and restricting opportunities for advancement for the disadvantaged despite their education. The paper argues that the question of language in education must be conceptualized with reference to the national language policy and seen in terms of its implications for development and inequality. This is because the trajectory of education into reduction of inequality, though widely emphasized, is not unproblematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes the other papers in this issue as 'data'-in other words, as a source of observation and comment-and then proceeds to further discussion, analysis and surmise. By focusing in substantial measure on the notions of authority, explanation, contention and register, ideas which occur both explicitly and tacitly in different articles here, and in conjunction with the different natures and uses to which language data are put, I attempt to explore aspects of contemporary work on language and communication and how to some varying degree a search for essence sits at its heart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine how language informs the systemic and structural manner in which the university space not only marginalises, but also exploits female and gender nonconforming people. I base my account on my experiences in two universities in southern Africa--one in Zimbabwe and the other in South Africa. I aim to show how gender and sexuality borders can be permeated by gaining critical awareness of the working of power and privilege in language that normalises the oppression of one by the other. I do this through a reflective autoethnographic account of the temporal trajectories involved in my experience as an academic of gender and sexuality in universities. I explore the notion of university as a social site where power relations of privilege and marginality can be found to be vivid if not violent. I reflect on my positionality and complicity in exploitative power relations in the university. I also make use of #FeesMustFall diaries as archival data to account for dynamics of exclusion. Theoretically, the article employs the colonial matrix of power to show how coloniality upholds gender and sexuality norms in universities and academics. The purpose of this paper is not to propose strategies for other institutions to use for unlearning pedagogies. Rather, the role of the paper is to document my and others' experiences of how heteropatriarchy manifests in the language used in the lecture room and beyond. In conclusion, the article shows how the author found critical diversity literacy, a learning pedagogy that promotes discomfort, helpful in realising the complicity of language in dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an overview on the various articles published within the issue of the journal. The issues consist of nine papers related to the issues of teacher education including a study that addresses the need to widen access to the teaching profession, a research that deals on a particular case of indigenous teachers in Australia and an investigation on how the teaching of a foreign language can be undertaken in a critical way to increase intercultural understanding.

Copyright of Higher Education Quarterly is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

English is taught at all stages of education in Kazakhstan and focuses on developing and improving reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. The objectives of higher schools are not in phase with the students' purposes for learning English. Students are not taught the rules and techniques to pass international exams on English or enter to universities to get master or doctorate degree. This paper presents the practical analysis of learning English in higher schools of Kazakhstan. The analysis was developed by scaling techniques for measuring data gathered from respondents based on Likert, the constant comparative, one-way variant analysis. The validity and the confidence is measured through the data obtained from 218 first-year students of L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University. The aim of the article is to determine the main problems of learning English in higher schools and present teachers' recommendations for students to improve and master English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first paper in this issue of Language Teaching Research deals with the zone of proximal development (ZPD) concept. Nassaji and Cumming argue that since its appearance in the work of Vygotsky, the ZPD concept has remained largely unexplored. Their paper attempts to change this state of affairs by looking at a set of interactive dialogue journals, produced by a six-year-old learner of English interacting with his teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study that examined the extent to which the development of academic literacy in isiZulu, an indigenous language spoken across all the nine provinces in South Africa, enhances opportunities for epistemological access. The focus is in relation to a pilot study of a Bachelor of Education Honours module that uses isiZulu as the Language of Learning and Teaching. New Literacy Studies is used to examine the extent to which an understanding of the nature of literacy as no longer so much on the acquisition of language skills, but as social practice, can develop academic literacy in isiZulu and enhance episte­mological access. The paper confronts the questions about whose literacy counts?, and why, and engages in ‘a discursive politics of knowledge production, asking what counts as knowledge, who is allowed to author it, whose interests does it serve, how and by whom is it contested?’ (Baynham, M., & Prinsloo, M. [2001]. New directions in literacy research.Language and Education,15, pp. 84–85). Case Study as a research design, Narrative Style interview technique and documentary evidence as research instruments, were used as a useful means to collect, conceptualise and organise data. Findings suggest that meaningful and successful engagement with the development of isiZulu, so that it becomes part of the academy, will depend entirely on implementing strategies to develop its academic discourse, the secondary discourse after the primary discourse of the home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the demise of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, 11 languages (English, Afrikaans and 9 indigenous African languages) were given official status. In the higher education landscape, English remains the dominant language of scholarship. At the University of KwaZulu-Natal, English is the main medium of instruction but the institution's language policy provides for the use of isiZulu (one of the indigenous African languages) as an additional medium of instruction. The paper discusses how three of the four colleges of the University are employing isiZulu in this role. This use of isiZulu is analysed through the following four theoretical perspectives: African scholarship, Africanization of higher education, the African Renaissance, and transformation. Whilst there are obviously some challenges in using isiZulu as a medium of instruction, it is very clear that the project deflates the myth that indigenous African languages can only serve in lower levels of education (such as primary schools) and not higher education. The paper is of relevance not only to South African universities, but also to other African (and even non-African) universities that plan to use indigenous languages as media of instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper explores the systems-theoretic underpinnings of academic monitoring activities in the area of the foreign language teaching. The feedback from students is shown to be the central component of these activities. Drawing on the recent literature on the Luhmannian social systems theory, the paper raises the issue of the sustainability of the educational systems concerned with the foreign language teaching. The argument is buttressed with a case study from the Tavria State Agrotechnological University in Melitopol, Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses academic mobility in Brazil over the past few years due to the increase in governmental initiatives to promote internationalization of higher education and student mobility. The aim is to address the challenges faced by the international academic mobility program Science without Borders (SwB) to boost the development of science, technology and innovation in the country. To live to this expectation, SwB fosters foreign language learning as a key element to the program's success. Known as the most expensive investment ever made in the country towards funding international mobility in higher education at the undergraduate level, Brazil is aiming high in the program. Whether or not the SwB generation will fulfill the task to transform science, technology and innovation in the country in the years to come is one of the questions raised by the study. Drawing on an analyses of qualitative data with undergraduate students, participants in the SwB program from 2011 to 2014, the paper discusses three important dimensions of the international mobility: (1) the contribution at educational and professional levels; (2) the contribution at a personal and subjective level; and (3) the importance of foreign language acquisition to broader education. The results support the argument that the SwB generation has developed, as its most salient aspect, a differential self-perspective after undergoing mobility and stress the importance of a more inclusive, multilingual language policy for the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociocultural theory of learning and dialogical theory of language and communication have drawn language educators' attention for the last decade or so. In this paper I will articulate my position, as a second language educator and researcher in sociocultural theory and Bakhtin's dialogism, on language and communication for language education. The paper begins with Bakhtin's contention against "abstract objectivism" along with his semiotic theory of language and proceeds to the merger of Bakhtin's speech genre and the concept of community of practice (CoP) formulated in the theory of legitimate peripheral participation by Lave and Wenger (1991). Communication is then examined in terms of communicative activity that is facilitated through the mobilization of speech genre. Moreover, increasing communicability within one national-language society is explained in terms of interaction between/among CoP, overlap of certain communicative activities among CoP, and multiple membership in different CoP by individuals, etc. Finally, communicative activity is defined as a verbally mediated activity in which people initiate and engage in the creation and progression of historical events while employing verbal signs. I conclude the paper with a discussion on some implications for curriculum planning and actual teaching practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an investigation of language use inside a content language integrated learning (CLIL) classroom at Saudi tertiary level. It examines the difference in language use between teachers and students in four subject-specific classrooms in which English is used as a medium of instruction. The study is informed by corpus linguistics (CL) and uses the principles and theoretical underpinning of conversation analysis (CA). It identifies the most frequent linguistic features of CLIL and examines their diverse interactional functions in this context. Amongst the most frequent linguistic features in CLIL are short response tokens such as "yes" and "no". Using a micro-analytic approach to conversation analysis, a closer look at the data shows the students' ability to use small and limited linguistic resources to accomplish multiple interactional functions such as taking the floor, taking turns and, most importantly, displaying orientation to knowledge. The data reflected the relationship between frequency and meaning construction. With regard to the difference in language use between teachers and students with regard to comes to short response tokens, the study shows some common interactional uses of response tokens between teachers and students, such as agreement, acknowledgement, response to confirmation checks and yes/no questions. On the other hand, it shows some exclusive interactional use of the same token by teachers and students. Finally, the paper emphasises the relationship of language, interaction and orientation to content knowledge in CLIL classrooms. Pedagogically, the findings have implications for teachers' language use and for increased classroom interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a comprehensive review on the use of help options ( HOs) in the multimedia listening context to aid listening comprehension ( LC) and improve incidental vocabulary learning. The paper also aims to synthesize the research findings obtained from the use of HOs in Computer-Assisted Language Learning ( CALL) literature and reveals the theoretical framework that has guided multimedia listening studies. The term HOs refers to any form of assistance, such as visual, auditory (ie, variety of pronunciations) or textual, that is displayed synchronously or asynchronously on the computer screen to facilitate language learning. The paper analyzes the potentials of HO techniques and reveals how these techniques are utilized in CALL literature. The paper then summarizes the overall gain in the use of HOs, highlights their limitations in LC tasks and recommends directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including the history of language study and teaching, contexts of multilingualism across time and space, and the bilingual aspects of learner-teacher biography and learning-teaching method.

How students build mathematics knowledge together in classrooms is of central concern in research focused on the role of language in learning and doing mathematics. This paper explores how students compose mathematics knowledge together in relation to the social construction of influence. Drawing on the influence framework (Engle et al. in J Learn Sci 23(2):245-268, 2014), core interactional components are made salient: gaining access to the conversational floor and interactional space, being perceived as intellectually meritorious, and being positioned with social and intellectual authority. Of these, being positioned with social and intellectual authority is argued to be most important. This paper highlights both the centrality of authority and its discursive nature and connects these ideas to collaborative mathematics activity. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical generativity of focusing on the functions of language in mathematics classrooms, in addition to its forms, to better articulate discursive mechanisms at play during collaborative mathematics learning activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two years, English language teaching at the level of basic education in China has been changing very fast due to the new Standard Curriculum. The paper takes a school in the northwest of China as an example, illustrating the process of implementing the Curriculum, summarizing the work the school has done, the problems encountered and arguing for the need to manage the change. The paper also gives some suggestions in conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conclusion begins with an analysis of the common thread that ties the papers included in this special issue together. The collection hinges on an analysis of issues of language and power in diverse contexts, seen in a perspective a la Jim Cummins. Included in the Conclusion is a discussion of how the papers in this collection illustrate or operationalize Cummins' (2001a) empowerment framework. The conclusion also discusses the diverse ways in which the papers examine the influence of societal power relations on educational structures and classroom instruction. Next, the explanatory value of Jim Cummins' empowerment framework is put to the test by evaluating its ability to account for the wide range of contexts of issues of language and power in the various texts. This is followed by a summary of key lessons learned from what the authors identified as constraints limiting bi/multilingual development in their contexts, followed by an analysis of overarching themes emerging from those constraints. Finally, current options for dealing with the constraints identified are reviewed, and recommendations are made as to promising paths of future research in the study of language and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Stanley Cavell's notion of ‘passionate utterance’, which acts as an extension of/departure from (we might read it as both) J. L. Austin's theory of the performative. Cavell argues that Austin having made the revolutionary discovery that truth claims in language are bound up with how words perform, then gets bogged by convention when discussing what is done ‘by’ words. In failing to account for the less predictable, unconventional aspects of language, the latter therefore washes his hands of the expressive passionate aspects of speech. To ignore such aspects is to ignore an important moral dimension of language. Finally, I bring Cavell's approach to bear on the epistemic criterion, which Michael Hand applies in his paper ‘Should We Teach Homosexuality as a Controversial Issue?’. I suggest that Hand's approach, by failing to account for the linguistic dimension of truth and the expressive quality that accompanies this dimension, presents an overly narrow conception of moral education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss current interest in educational reform in Puerto Rico, the need for better and more appropriate assessment tools, the growing realisation in the USA that two-way bilingual programmes can provide an effective vehicle for fostering the development of bilingual proficiency, bicultural competence and subject-matter knowledge for heritage language students; and the possible confluence and implications of these three threads of work for the education of Puerto Rican children who participate in the so-called ‘migrant stream’ moving regularly between the island and the mainland. The paper concludes with the listing of a number of prospective research questions that might form the basis for a set of planned-variation studies to examine diverse factors associated with improving the quality of language teaching and learning in Puerto Rico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces the February 2005 issue of the journal "Comparative Education". Place of theory in research; Potential of historical perspectives; Centrality of language and culture in education and nation building.

Copyright of Canadian Modern Language Review is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research involving the plurilingualism of young people has begun to focus upon how we must re-conceptualise language learning to acknowledge the language resources of children with plurilingual experiences. This is particularly important in countries like Australia with a traditionally monolingual mindset embedded in policy, education, and the views of much of the community. Growing arguments posit that it is more important to focus on the resourceful use of language than attempts to measure skill, competence, or fluency in one language. In this paper, the movement between languages of children with a range of linguistic repertoires is explored in the Australian context. Data are taken from student and teacher interviews and focus groups with parents across five different primary schools, each with a bilingual education programme. The paper argues that bilingual programmes aimed at monolingual background students can have benefits for more than one kind of plurilingual student. It was found that plurilingual children drew on their home language(s) as a resource in school contexts where other languages were used, showed an increased enjoyment of learning, and developed learning strategies which built on their plurilingual experiences. Additionally, the data showed how teachers in these contexts worked towards expanding their own linguistic repertoires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of increasing linguistic and cultural diversity in Australian schools, it is important to consider the value of students' multilingual resources for learning. This paper reports on an ethnographic case study conducted in an Australian metropolitan secondary school where the student body represented more than 40 cultures and languages, yet where the broader structures of education were dominated by a monolingual orientation. The study draws data from student artefacts, student focus groups, a staff questionnaire, and staff interviews to reveal the ways in which multilingual students and their teachers construct and enact language policy at the classroom level. Key themes to emerge from the data included students' application of multilingual resources for individual and collaborative learning and the way multilingualism and related practices, such as translanguaging, were valued by students. Additionally, the data illustrated teachers' situated approaches ranging from a resistance towards multilingual practices, through to active construction of a multilingual classroom. Teachers' approaches which facilitated students' use of their own linguistic resources for learning, and how these approaches were negotiated within a context otherwise dominated by monolingual pedagogies will also be discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]