In a multilingual classroom, students come from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. They bring various cultural experiences, knowledge, and linguistic resources with them, however, most of the time, these resources remain unutilized as the medium for discourse in the classroom is often the dominant language. As a result, minority…

The challenges involved in navigating between home, school and academic languages, especially in a low resource context, have been well documented in the literature. Processes and strategies that allow the use of students' "language as resource" have also been suggested by research. In the context of explorations, where students work…

The present large-scale mixed-method study examined English language classroom anxiety and enjoyment in Chinese young students in relation to gender and grade level. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 709 primary and secondary school students from a province in south China. Major findings were: (1) Around one third of the…

In this article we examine a teacher's and multilingual students' use of multiple resources and their potential for students' meaning-making of sound and sound transmission. Students were 14-15 years old, Swedish grade 8, speaking Swedish as a second language. We examine how different strategies and multiple resources interact in creating thematic…

The nature of discourse within classrooms strongly predicts students' ability to think about, around, and with text and content (i.e. comprehension and critical-analytic thinking). However, little is known about the nature of classroom discourse in remote, rural South African schools, a context in which students face well-documented language…

This article traces the interaction of multimodal semiotic resources within and across tasks constituting a science unit on surface tension in an eighth-grade sheltered science classroom. Two discourses, operating simultaneously, realized differently motivated signs. This article follows the contribution of linguistic and extralinguistic modes…

Teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) encourage students to take a more active role in the oral activities in the classroom through different strategies. This study examines the use of picture descriptions as a strategy to develop and enhance communication skills among the eighth-grade students attending a private English school in…

We seek to understand how bilingual adolescent students leverage multiple languages and modes in digital composition. Using a translingual and multimodal perspective of composition, this study reports on the distinct communicative affordances associated with four students' multimodal codemeshing practices. Through analysis of students' digital…

This paper reports on the classroom languaging practices of a group of science teachers in rural and township schools in South Africa where the majority of learners learn through the medium of English, despite the fact that it is the home language of only a small minority; and learners' poor English proficiency frequently restricts their access to…

This paper explores the impact of a specially designed programme of communicative strategies on English second language (ESL) development in a scaffolded case study that set out to promote teacher-guided, constructive learner talk in the outcomes-based education arts and culture classroom. The programme was implemented in a multilingual secondary…

South Africa is a multilingual country with 11 official languages. However, English dominates as the language of access and power and although the Language-in-Education Policy (1997) recommends school language policies that will promote additive bilingualism and the use of learners' home languages as languages of learning and teaching, there has…