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Research has shown that arts-based approaches facilitate literacy learning in children; however, few studies have focused on the integration of art and early writing in community-based Chinese heritage language classes, which have been marginalized from the formal educational discourse in the United States. By drawing on the theoretical perspectives on social semiotics, this paper explored how young Chinese heritage learners engage in "writing" Chinese characters using fallen leaves. The data sources included field notes of observations, video recordings of the class, and the artifacts made by the children. Multimodal analysis revealed that the teacher invited the students to write together and created a social context for children to compose writing artwork. Children engaged with their composition through a variety of modes. This study has implications for research, practice, and policy. [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 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.

One of the differences between full and reduced language varieties is the repertoire of their use (Dorian, 1981, 1994). In this paper Jargue that the written discourse ofAmerican Lithuanian (AL), a language variety spoken in the United States, is different from and to some extent impoverished compared to the written discourse of Full Lithuanian (FL), a language variety used by its native speech community in the Republic of Lithuania. I suggest that this is a result of the primarily oral function ofAmerican Lithuanian in its speech community. The data used for the study consist of a 40,000-word corpus of written local news and oral interviews in FL and AL. The paper focuses on the structural composition of written and oral texts in American Lithuanian and Full Lithuanian and analyzes (a) information structure in terms of word order variation as part of cohesion and (b) referent accessibility and the grammatical form of the referent NP as part of coherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This inquiry examines The State of English Education and a Vision of Its Future: A Call to Arms (2006), a US position paper that argues that English education research should guide the reconstruction of English for the twenty-first century. Through an historical approach, I illustrate how the position paper conflates progress and academic research in ways that overstate the extent to which the position paper has broken with past visions of reform. I also highlight how the position paper ironically ascribes academic research a regulatory function that may work against English educators' genuine concerns about democracy, teacher autonomy, and social change. This analysis implicates how scholars might reassess political deployments of educational research, and it also seeks to open space to debate and play with the boundaries by and through which English education might be known and reconstructed in the early twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theorizing classrooms as contexts of reception shaped by ideological, relational, and pedagogical dimensions, and drawing on ethnographic data from a yearlong study of recent‐arrival immigrant youths' educational experiences in an urban U.S. high school, this paper describes how a group of recent‐arrival youth acted upon the discourses, pedagogical practices, and identity categories in their content‐area and ESL classes. It challenges traditional depictions of school engagement that focus on youths' personal traits and individual attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports a mixed-methods study about using virtual reality (VR) tools (Google Cardboard and Expeditions) for developing students' oral proficiency in learning Chinese as a second language. Twelve students role-played as tour guides for six locations throughout a semester: four of them with VR tools and two without. Data collection included oral presentations recorded at four different times of the semester (for Presentations 1, 3, 4, and 6), class observations, participants' reflection papers, and individual interviews at the end of the semester. Results revealed that the content and vocabulary of participants' oral presentations when using VR tools scored statistically significantly higher than when not using VR tools. Qualitative data showed that participants felt that VR tools facilitated preparation and encouraged active learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the incorporation of identity texts grounded in the multiliteracies framework Learning by Design to second language (L2) instruction in required Spanish classes at a university in the Southern United States. In particular, it focuses on student work on multimodal identity texts during two academic semesters from 173 beginning and 205 intermediate students. The paper describes the pedagogical process that gave students the opportunity to use their L2 to analyse, develop, and connect multimodal texts directly to their individual experiences. In addition, students reported not only instructional and personal benefits, but also their views of the project itself through an open-ended survey. Also included is a sentiment analysis of the participants' emotions toward L2 instruction after completing their texts. The findings from the survey reveal that the participants were able to identify a variety of instructional and personal benefits, and their perceptions of the project were overwhelmingly positive. The sentiment analysis showed that learners harboured extremely positive emotions towards the kind of instruction of which identity texts were part. Also, their work on identity texts seems to have contributed to their investment in these required L2 classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines perspectives on language diversity that surfaced prior to, during, and immediately following the implementation of a two-way immersion program in a public school district in Iowa. Using a social constructionist paradigm, combined with Habermas’ understanding of the public sphere, the paper explores local and regional media coverage of the two-way immersion program alongside coverage of emerging language legislation on Official English in Iowa, spanning the last years of the 20th century into the beginning of the 21st. The analysis reveals a variety of postures within the public discourse related to the presence and use of languages other than English in this Midwestern context. The paper argues that it is precisely this interface of varying perspectives that will potentially facilitate a more lasting receptive social environment towards language diversity in the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the future of Spanish in the United States and on the tensions and challenges that surround what Fishman (1964) referred to asintergenerational continuity. It examines the teaching of language itself and the role of such instruction in the development and maintenance of Spanish/English multicompetence (Cook, 1996), that is, of the complex linguistic repertoires of Latin@s in the United States. Because language instruction generally continues to view languages as autonomous codes and systems of rules and structures, the paper draws attention to specific pedagogical questions that must be addressed by those committed to both educational access and equity for Latin@s as well as to their linguistic multicompetence in a context in which members of the new Latino/Hispanic category struggle with issues of race, class, and language, with their membership in the new panethnic category itself, and with the ways in which they are constructed by their teachers and their mainstream peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in providing Mandarin foreign language at K-12 schools in the United States has grown steadily since the language was identified as critical to the U.S. finance and social security. However, the shortage of qualified Mandarin teachers is widely recognized as the key bottleneck to building capacity in Mandarin education. Drawing from research on teacher learning and teaching as well as effective bilingual education, this paper highlights a specific challenge that might influence Mandarin teachers' capacity to carry out effective and successful teaching in the US classroom, that is, their implicit cultural knowledge of teaching. Data from a case study that examined a Mandarin classroom taught by two teachers from Taiwan illustrated how their actual classroom practices were mediated by their understandings of the culture of teaching in Taiwan and the United States. Some fundamental differences between the two cultures embedded in education might account for these teachers' frustration in teaching and limited language teaching in the classroom. The findings point to the need to engage Mandarin teachers with critical reflection of their own understanding of teaching in their countries of origin and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When power tests include a time limit, it is important to assess the possibility of speededness for examinees. Past research on differential speededness has examined gender and ethnic subgroups in the United States on paper and pencil tests. When considering the needs of a global audience, research regarding different native language speakers is warranted. Data from a computerized adaptive test administered globally in English were used to compare different measures of time pressure and speed for 15 language groups compared to native-speaking English examinees. Results indicated that examinees whose native language was Korean had issues with speededness when many of the metrics were considered, but when test score was controlled, there were no relevant differences for any of the languages compared to English. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (SFLL) (National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project [NSFLEP]), originally published in 1996, were envisioned by many as the panacea for providing a new and exciting direction for foreign language education in the United States. The perceived impact of these National K-16 Student Standards has been witnessed throughout more than a decade by scholarly works that have acknowledged their role as ‘a veritable change agent’ (Sharpley-Whiting 1999: 84), ‘a vision for foreign language education in the new century’ (Allen 2002: 518), and, more recently, as ‘a blueprint and framework for change’ (Terry 2009: 17). The research that has been done on the Standards since their inception has attempted to provide concrete ways for the field to embrace this new framework and thereby realize a Standards-based curriculum and perhaps even revolutionize language education. This work has consisted largely of (1) implementational research (both with and without experimental design) that proposes specific strategies for addressing the Standards in planning, teaching, and assessment (Schwartz & Kavanaugh 1997; Abbott & Lear 2010); (2) survey research that analyzes self-reported information regarding teachers' pedagogical beliefs about the Standards and ways in which they claim to be addressing Standards in their classrooms (Allen 2002; ACTFL 2011), and (3) White papers that disseminate opinions and insights by leaders in the field regarding the impact that the Standards are having in areas such as language instruction, curriculum and course design, and educational policy (Sharpley-Whiting 1999; Donato 2009; Glisan 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is on US language policy statements that govern the priorities for teaching languages other than English in public schools and the language ideologies implied by specific management moves by the federal government to regulate language education, starting with the Bilingual Education Act (BEA) of 1968. Following introductory comments on language ideology, rhetorical positioning, and claims-making, this paper provides an overview of language diversity in the USA as the context for examining four major policy statements by the federal government up through the present: (1) the ‘BEA of 1968’; (2) ‘No Child Left Behind’ (NCLB), which replaced the BEA when it became law in 2002; (3) the ‘National Security Language Initiative of 2006’; and (4) the current proposal from President Barack Obama's administration, titled ‘A Blueprint for Reform’, which – if enacted – will replace ‘NCLB’. The next section provides an overview of European Union (EU) language policy in recent years to highlight the sharp contrast between the EU and US approaches. This paper closes with a comparison of the EU and US approaches, with emphasis on how the EU approach could be instructive for US policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper suggests that among reasons for the difficulties collegiate foreign language (FL) programs in the United States (and most likely elsewhere) encounter in assuring that their students attain the kind of upper-level multiple literacies necessary for engaging in sophisticated work with FL oral and written texts may be the fact that prevailing frameworks for capturing FL performance, development, and assessment are insufficient for envisioning such textually oriented learning goals. The result of this mismatch between dominant frameworks, typically associated with communicative language teaching, and the goals of literary cultural studies programs as humanities programs is that collegiate FL departments and their faculty members face serious obstacles in their efforts to create the kind of coherent, comprehensive, and principled curricula that would be necessary for overcoming what are already extraordinary challenges in an educational environment that provides little support for long-term, sustained efforts at language development toward advanced multiple literacies. The paper traces these links by examining three such frameworks in the United States: the Proficiency framework of the 1980s, based on the ACTFL oral proficiency interview, the Standards framework of the 1990s, part of a more general standards movement in U.S. education, and the most recent document, by the Modern Language Association (MLA), which focuses on the need for new curricular structures in collegiate FL education. Specifically, it provides an overview of the U.S. educational landscape with an eye toward the considerable influence such frameworks can have in the absence of a comprehensive language education policy; lays out key characteristics that would be necessary for a viable approach to collegiate FL education; probes the complex effects the three frameworks have had in collegiate FL programs; and explores how one department sought to counter-act their detrimental influence in order to affirm and realize a humanistically oriented approach to FL education. The paper concludes with overall observations about the increasing power of frameworks to set educational goals and ways to counteract their potentially unwelcome consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research describes a method applied at a U.S. university in a third-year Russian language course designed to facilitate Advanced and Superior second language writing proficiency through the forum of argumentation and debate. Participants had extensive informal language experience living in a Russian-speaking country but comparatively little formal language instruction, especially with regard to writing. The authors quantitatively analyzed weekly position papers and ACTFL pre- and post-Written Proficiency Test compositions using prescribed complexity measures and compared them with qualitative ACTFL proficiency ratings. Preliminary findings underscore the value to both the writer and instructor of applying both quantitative and qualitative measures; they likewise point out challenges associated with teaching students whose language has become automatized, albeit oftentimes error-full, in part owing to the nature of past language study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the sociocultural theoretical framework that this paper adopts, learning, including second-language learning, is conceptualised as increasing participation in a community of practice. Thus it becomes of central importance to examine the nature of the community itself and the kinds of participatory opportunities that it supports or discourages. For it is through their engagement in the specific practices of their communities that students appropriate the knowledgeable skills that these practices involve. In this paper, based on the findings of an exploratory ethnographic study conducted in a US middle school, I examine the learning opportunities created for adolescent English language learners in three different classrooms and the ways in which these students took up these opportunities. I argue that, in addition to the particular subject matter to be taught, what appears to shape the kinds of learning opportunities afforded to English language learners is: (a) teachers' conceptualisation of the needs of second-language students; (b) the ways in which they perceive their own role in responding to these needs; and (c) the larger context of institutional practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a performance-based assessment research project conducted at the US Air Force Academy during the 2004–2005 academic year. The primary purpose of the research project was to measure post-secondary students’ progress towards meeting the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century – specifically the three modes of communication. The article explains how Integrated Performance Assessment measures learners’ language performance in light of current research in foreign language assessment. The paper demonstrates a sample Integrated Performance Assessment for a post-secondary Spanish culture and civilization course, and shares data on the students’ performance for the interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational modes of communication. Correlational data on the impact of middle and high school language learning on post-secondary language performance is also shared. Finally, the paper argues that, unlike traditional testing formats, integrated performance assessment connects teaching, learning, and assessment seamlessly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent national security concerns and global trade interests have led many to claim that there is a foreign language "crisis" in the US. Some argue that heritage and community language (HL-CL) speakers in the US constitute a resource waiting to be tapped to solve this crisis. This article addresses the issue of whether heritage and community language speakers can or should be exploited to ameliorate this perceived crisis. To address these issues, the paper considers the demographic context of language diversity in the US and how it relates to languages being taught. It analyzes the ideological nature of the discourse about language diversity in the US and reviews the historical position of HLs-CLs. The paper considers current challenges to promoting HLs-CLs given the condition of language teaching. Last, it explores future prospects for promoting community languages in the US and the extent to which HLs-CLs might help to expand foreign language (FL) instruction within the post 9/11 context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transcripts were made of teacher-student conversations in four Hawaiian classrooms in which Korean is taught as a heritage language. The study examines the use of the sentence-ending particle yo, the meaning of the particle, the way it is used in interaction, and its sociopragmatic implication. The following research questions are addressed: (1) Is yo, spoken by the teachers, used to index politeness towards their students? (2) What social meaning does the marker signal in classroom conversation? and (3) What effects can we speculate that the teacher's use of yo has on the socialisation of the students? Analysing the teacher-student's spontaneous conversations with a special focus on teacher-talk, the paper argues that yo is a powerful tool of socialisation, with which the teachers instruct their students explicitly and implicitly on the social meanings of the marker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the use of Classroom Assessment Techniques (CAT) to improve foreign language composition courses in the U.S. CAT examine students' language development which can assist instructors to prioritize goals and evaluate effectiveness of instructional techniques. Though used to examine learning by particular course and encourage systematic data collection, CAT do not provide evidence for evaluating students wherein it should be used for formative purposes. It is also used to focus on learning particular needs.

Examines 11 design-of-instruction criteria for selecting and analyzing an effective language curriculum in the United States. Importance of basic language concept acquisition; Discussion of the `Matthew effect'; Guidelines for designing a concept teaching sequence.

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As a social movement, dual language challenges and co-exists alongside traditional English-only classrooms in the US. Using Manuel Pastor's social movements framework, we demonstrate how dual language provides teaching methods and languages of instruction that allow varying student populations to excel in learning the official curriculum. In this way, dual language addresses inequities in access to education and quality of instruction as addressed in the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. and international agreements about the rights of children to learn in a language they understand. The U.S. dual language movement seeks to level the playing field for students and is sought by a range of schools, school systems, and states to meet the needs of increasingly diverse learners from a range of language and socioeconomic groups. In this paper, we address the quest of school leaders and parents to achieve successful academic results for Latino students through dual language programs. Drawing from a qualitative study of seven dual language programs in schools in two school districts, this article aims to explain how educators adapt dual language models to the needs of their changing communities. The schools' leadership led a process of academic innovations as they reshaped and improved the design of programs to serve their students. All the schools confirmed that they encountered difficulty in maintaining a 50-50 dual language model, but they also reported having to engage in continuous renewal and improvement in order to serve the needs of their communities. The article highlights the crucial role of the community in support of dual language learning and describes the empowerment networks of community actors that take part in education decision-making-which include parents, community education councils, and the schools' leadership. Through this research, we find Dual language programs, when combined with the rest of the schools' programs or when implemented across the school, to be one of the most innovative and effective forms of education programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work studies mathematics word problems' use in a classroom of recent immigrants, or newcomers, to a United States public elementary school. I study how word problems foster the recontextualization of mathematical concepts in a lived reality experienced by newcomer students in their new cultural and educational setting. In this study's setting language plays a significant role in the process of meaning-making. I describe how language use in word problems remains intertwined with mathematics instruction. This opens a space for questioning word problems' purpose and role in multilingual classrooms, and I highlight how the creative process of co-constructing problems' meaning in this context can expand notions of genre applied to word problems. Throughout I adopt a theorization of translanguaging as a language practice and apply it in problem discussion. This helps probe how language use impacts students' ways of understanding and utilizing mathematical concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compared three-word move-specific lexical bundles (MLBs) in dissertation abstracts authored by linguistics doctoral students from China and the United States. Two separate corpora were constructed for analysis: (1) The China Linguistics PhD Abstracts Corpus (CLC), consisting of 700 abstracts totaling 613,713 words generated by doctoral students from China specializing in linguistics, and (2) the America Linguistics PhD Abstracts Corpus (ALC), comprising 700 abstracts totaling 247,359 words written by American doctoral students in linguistics. The identification of MLBs was based on log-likelihood values, indicating a notably higher number of instances within a specific move in contrast to the overall corpus. The study then proceeded to compare the structures, functions, and communicative purposes of MLBs in the two corpora. The findings of the analysis are as follows: (1) Chinese students employed a higher percentage of NP- and PP-based MLBs but a lower proportion of VP-based MLBs, and both groups used different words within similar structures; (2) Chinese students employed a higher percentage of research- and participant-oriented MLBs but a lower proportion of text-oriented MLBs, and the two groups used dissimilar MLBs to fulfill similar functions; and (3) the two groups employed distinct MLBs to achieve identical communicative purposes, with Chinese students utilizing MLBs specific to the CLC corpus. These findings highlight the pedagogical significance of MLBs and underscore the importance of corpus linguistics in identifying and teaching essential move-specific vocabulary to second/foreign language learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers and foreign language (FL) educators alike have investigated changes in learners' intercultural competence (IC) in response to pedagogical interventions aimed at preparing learners for cross-cultural encounters. Byram's (1997) multimodal IC model and Bennett's (1993) developmental model of intercultural sensitivity (DMIS) are predominant IC assessment models in the field of FL education. This paper reports empirical evidence that reveals discrepancies between these two models drawing from the findings of a larger study that employed both theoretical lenses to investigate culture learning in a computer-mediated environment. Specifically, the study investigated changes in the way 13 U.S. French language learners talked about French people and culture in online classroom discussions in response to virtual instruction about French cultural practices at two levels: (1) at the individual level--with Byram's IC model in three case studies and (2) at the group level--with Bennett's DMIS. A post hoc comparison of the findings revealed assessment discrepancies between the models--empirical evidence revealing contradictions both between and within the models. These discrepancies are reported and the merits of each model within the research design are discussed. The aim of this paper is to empower readers with an understanding of IC research instruments and assessment tools commonly used to measure IC development in FL education and to inform methodological decisions of future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to trace the actual demand on enrolments over time, as much as the history of wavering public and academic sentiment towards teaching and speaking Spanish in this country during the last century. Secondarily, we examine the question of the value of mother tongue fluency or the acquisition, mastery and usage of the Spanish language in today's international marketplace. Using a qualitative review of current research, we provide some approximations of economic and marketing quantitative determinations of 'value' of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to explore and assess the improvement in intercultural competence of USAF Academy cadets using indirect measures (e.g., questions in end-of-course critiques and institutional surveys) and a direct measure--specifically the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). Data gathered from several groups of subjects at different academic levels were evaluated to see if certain variables were facilitating intercultural competence growth. Initial findings suggest that language study and time spent abroad in target language countries assist students in gaining intercultural competence. The notion of multicultural or intercultural competence is clearly not the sole purview of the foreign language (FL) education field. Indeed, it has been an issue of high interest for several decades in a variety of realms such as government milieus, general educational settings, and business environments. As the world became increasingly more global, a need was perceived both to define and then assess one's intercultural competence and potential for success while functioning in a particular venue. One solution proffered to address this need was the creation of a model to describe intercultural competence and then the development of an instrument to measure that competence. Several such models (e.g., Bennett, 1986; Byram, 1997; van der Zee & van Oudenhoven, 2000; Ward & Kennedy, 1999) have been developed in an attempt to describe and then measure intercultural competence, and they have been employed in a wide array of situations where intercultural competence is desired. A discussion of these models and instruments as well as a more detailed explanation of the model selected for use in the present study are presented later in this paper. The particular model selected and the empirical measure of its theoretical concepts were the basis for a study conducted at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in order to measure the intercultural competence of three groups of students (cadets) at different stages in their educational careers and with diverse international experiences. It is important to understand the institutional context of USAFA, as it is distinctly different from most other tertiary institutions on a number of levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares and analyzes the use of connectors, linking adverbials (LAs--therefore, however, instead) and coordinating conjunctions (CCs--and, but, or) in the editorials of Korean and American English newspapers. The purpose of the research was to see whether there are any significant differences in their use of connectors with regard to their semantic categories and their two formal types. The analyses have shown that LAs are more prevalent in K(orean)-corpora (61.7%/38.5%), while CCs are used more often (38.5%/61.5%) in A(merican)-corpora. The position-wise analyses have also shown that K-writers seem to prefer additive LAs such as also, which functions as a reinforcing linker, unlike A-writers who use and far more frequently. Furthermore, K-writers are shown to choose a relatively higher ratio of however, an emphatic adverb, and a lower ratio of but. This study claims that K-writers' such preference for expressions of emphasis and certainty is a case of L1 transfer of stylistics (or rhetoric) into English writing, and that it originates ultimately from the Korean culture of medial power distance. Its educational implications include that English connectors should be taught along with their stylistic imports, and that a curriculum-integrative instruction is needed which involves Korean and English teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an integrated approach to the teaching and learning of Chinese zh, one difficult sound particularly challenging to Hispanic students. The proposed approach consists of three components, namely a mouthercise, a flash animation, and a set of class practice and performance drills. An experiment of this approach has been conducted in a beginning Chinese class in an American university classroom setting. The results yield strong support for the efficacy of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines qualitative data from a two family case study in New South Wales. Both families are from South America and have recently moved to Australia. This study demonstrates that an understanding of the ways that the families are becoming literate in Australia necessitates moving beyond linguistic analyses of the changes that are occurring. The changes that are addressed constitute a politics of immigration, whereby the internal hopes and desires of the family make up an affective plane that transforms language learning. Such writing exemplifies the use of Deleuzian theory in the analysis of the literacy learning of the families, and shows how this rests on notions of the will to power, affect and the multiple nature of the self. The paper will use Masny's (2006) multiple literacies theory (MLT) to reconcile the politics of becoming involved with the immigration of the families and variant modes of expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educating multilingual students is a great challenge for both teachers and parents in a society in which English is the medium of schooling and of wider communication. Top-down language policies often overpower teachers' individual intentions and practices. In this paper, we point out that language ideologies in 'commonsense' beliefs and political orientations, rather than pedagogical considerations or research evidence, motivate language policies. We particularly discuss the language ideologies of standardization and monolingualism that underlie bilingual education and English-only policies in the U.S. and how these policies conflict with the reality of multilingual students' linguistic and identity practices. We also examine research on bilingual, bidialectal, and plurilingual practices in which multiple languages or varieties within a language co-exist and are used creatively by speakers for significant social and pragmatic functions, and we highlight the critical gap between top-down language policies and such ground-level plurilingualism. Teachers' knowledge of such plurilingual practices by their students and their deeper understanding of and critical perspective toward language policies can empower them to negotiate top-down language polices in their classrooms in order to facilitate language and literacy development among their multilingual students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US foreign language education is often presented as an opportunity to foster intercultural communication; yet, curricula frequently build borders between an English-speaking 'we' and a non-English-speaking 'they'. Little is known, however, about how language students make sense of their changing linguistic identities as they encounter users of the language of instruction outside the classroom. This paper examines the stories those enrolled in university-level Spanish courses tell about their language learning histories and experiences. It considers how these stories construct particular, and frequently asymmetrical, social and linguistic borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) is a method that requires students to work in small groups, view models or diagrams, and answer carefully designed questions that guide them to an understanding of the subject matter on their own, with minimal direction from the instructor. Several studies show that the method has been highly effective in teaching high school and university math and science students. This paper shows that the method is also effective in the foreign language classroom, and explains its main features and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In light of the increasing student diversity in U.S. university composition classrooms, there is a strong need for collaboration between L1 and L2 writing specialists. Differences in the lexicons of our two fields, however, as well as the philosophical differences embedded in our word choices, can hinder productive L1–L2 communication. The purpose of our paper is to examine how genre can transcend disciplinary “scare words” and promote collaboration between L1 and L2 compositionists. We recognize, however, that genre is a fragile disciplinary bridge, as it has been approached differently in L1 and L2 language teaching. The paper therefore explores where our two fields share common ground in approaching genre, where we can learn from each other, and where we can accept our differences. We do this through analyzing our own experiences collaborating on common curricular guidelines and sharing genre-based teaching materials. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This special issue offers papers that together reach toward sociological understanding of “meaning.” We contextualize that effort in intersecting intellectual trends—the emerging relational sociology of networks and meanings, which has progressed steadily since the 1990s, and the diverse enterprise of sociology of language, which is much less established in the U.S. Given space limitations, we acknowledge others’ work but concentrate on Harrison White''s turn to language and linguistics, which influenced all the papers herein. We highlight each paper''s contribution to a new relational sociology and new understanding of language as mechanism and methodology, which might change the study of agentic actions, social processes, politics, networks and institutions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Using methods from conversation analysis, this paper explores ways that teacher-designed language-learning task interactions can vary in their performance due to the nature of face-to-face interaction. The analysis describes three task interactions from language-learning classrooms, showing how the contingencies that are necessitated by learners working in small groups provide for different task performance as well as different potentials for language learning. The video-recorded interactions come from two different classroom contexts: adult English-language learners in the USA and adolescent learners of French in Switzerland. In each context, the learners are engaged in a directions-giving task. Participants' individual and group orientations to these similar teacher-designed tasks lead to different co-constructed performances of the task and, in each case, unique learning potentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surmises the position and ambition of a nonnative speaker/teacher of a European language and literature as an ostensible facilitator of cultural difference in the U.S. foreign-language classroom. The paper opens a space to think through pedagogical conceptuality and the practice of assisting and guiding students in their perceptions of cultural difference in the specific situation when the instructor carries visible inscriptions of his/her “Otherness.” Through an investigation of the adjectives “native” and “non-native,” the article critically reconsiders privileges of birth, affiliations through residence, education, and ethnicity. This article sutures two different streams of scholarship. First, by engaging with scholarship on German as a foreign language in the U.S., the article construes the “position” of the nonnative speaker vis-a-vis the native speaker/instructor. Next, through a discussion with cultural theorists, the article puts to test the “ambition” of the nonnative-minority as an allegedly reliable native informant of interculturality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an approach to helping end the literacy crisis that faces ESL learners in US public schools. Grounded in educational research in second language acquisition and literacy studies, the paper offers support for all students enrolled in academic programs of English language instruction. By generating motivation and enthusiasm for reading and writing, ESL students are more likely to do better on tests, enjoy reading and writing, and do more of both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational interventions designed to serve the needs of English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. public schools are developed within a fractured social context. Recent language and immigration policy debates in the U.S. have focused on the importance of English in attaining socio-economic success. On the other hand, research in applied linguistics has shown that immigrants who become English monolingual do not fare better than their counterparts who develop bilingual skills and maintain a connection to their heritage. All of these discussions place the emphasis on what individuals have and do not have. The paper presents an alternative view of how to address issues of multilingualism in education by framing them in terms of opportunities the environment affords. This perspective is illustrated with a professional development program focused on designing environments with opportunities to develop critical language awareness. The case study reports work done with history teachers working with ELLs in the mainstream classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTChanging trends in colloquial American English from the viewpoint of a visitor and their implications for teaching of English in China. Knowing that language changes and an appreciation of current changes is of great importance for foreign-language learners as it helps enable them to have a good command of the current language so as to strengthen their ability to communicate with native speakers with facility. The reality Chinese learners of English face is, however, that they hardly have opportunities to be exposed to natural spoken forms of the target language around them, let alone access to its current changing trends. This paper aims to present such information. Based on the investigation I made among native English-speaking Americans, it tries, from a descriptive pragmatic point of view, to give an account of some salient trends of American English in daily communication. It takes everyday spoken American English as the object of study, for it is the kernel part of the language for social interaction. It is this part of the language that first undergoes changes in response to various social events, and that, having much to do with the study of language use, deserves our special attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on findings obtained from an online survey answered by 97foreign language department chairs. The Web survey was pilot tested for validity and reliability and obtained a Cronbach's reliability coefficient of .80. The results suggest that student learning outcomes assessment in American undergraduate foreign language education combines performance-based and traditional assessments. The use of translation as an assessment method supersedes the application of the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and exit exams to gauge language proficiency. The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and the National Standards are common in the assessment of oral proficiency, but infrequent in the development of assessment procedures of other skills. The article also reports on obstacles that institutions face in the implementation of standards-based assessments (e.g., OPI and portfolios). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of a global citizen, who is able to participate in the public discourse, depends on the development of plurilingual and intercultural communicative competences, supported by a physical and online mobility. The purpose of this paper is to show how the integration of chats within the teaching/learning process of English and Portuguese as foreign languages offers possibilities of developing these competences in university students from Portugal and the USA. The study will focus on the processes of negotiation of representations of languages and cultures in order to analyse the intercultural communicative and plurilingual competences in action. The data are composed of sequences of two multilingual chat sessions which occurred during a school year. In the analysis of the Internet discourse, it will be possible to observe how chatters became competent intercultural cybercommunicators through negotiating representations of languages as learning, affective and cultural objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows the author lamenting a language loss at the Modern Language Association (MLA). The author asserts that the MLA could help Native language students with fewer language-learning resources. He also examines how are Native American languages treated by the MLA Language Map. In 2006, the MLA urges colleges and universities to teach the languages of Native American nations in their regions and to grant credit for the study of Native American language. The association also encourages research to create and update dictionaries, grammars, orthographies, curricula, and other materials to support the teaching of Native American languages.

The growth of KFL (Korean-as-a-Foreign-Language) programmes in the US college setting has been truly remarkable in the last three decades. However, despite the gradual and steady growth of the non-heritage student population, the predominant group has been heritage students in most KFL programmes. In addition, teaching these two groups of students effectively has been a key concern for KFL teachers and administrators. For example, KFL programmes in the US have been geared toward teaching heritage students due to their dominant presence. However, the drastic increase in non-heritage student population calls for change in the KFL curriculum. The goal of this paper is to report the use of CATs (Classroom Assessment Techniques) as a possible pedagogical solution, in dealing with this complicated issue. The paper visits the current pedagogical and administrative issues, dealing with the two student groups of KFL programmes in the US college setting, and suggests the use of CATs as a possible solution for the matter, in particular, its beneficial merits in enhancing affective stances of students. The paper argues that CATs can be valuable tools in most teaching contexts, especially for the class with mixed student composition. Although the cases presented in this paper are from a third year Advanced Korean course, the techniques presented may be adapted for use in nearly any foreign language course that has struggled with the heritage and non-heritage student issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]