When acquiring the English plural, children correctly produce plural words long before they develop an understanding of morphological structure. When acquiring Sesotho noun prefixes, children are aware of the multiple constraints governing variation from a young age. Both of these cases raise questions about the Shin and Miller (2022) account of…

Suresh Canagarajah is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor and Director of the Migration Studies Project, Departments of Applied Linguistics and English, Pennsylvania State University, USA. Having a BA with a major in English from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, Professor…

Language-in-education research can contribute to transformative progress toward educational equity and excellence. Although this assertion is likely uncontroversial within the field of language in education, agreeing on which types of research lead to which transformative progress is much less straightforward. The thought-provoking commentaries on…

Within the spirit of conspiration, this article brings together contributions from participants of the PhD-led UCL Reading and React Group 'Colonialism(s), Neoliberalism(s) and Language Teaching and Learning', which ran in 2019/20. Weaving together various perspectives, the article centres on the dialogic nature of the decolonial enterprise and…

In this personal reflection, Sonia Nieto recounts the lessons she learned about language and literacy from learning to speak Spanish and then English; to reading and writing; and the impact of these lessons on her identity, teaching, research, and life; and, more broadly, on the fields of education and literacy.

While learning and teaching English as an additional language are lifelong learning processes for both learners and teachers, these two sectors are largely dominated by West-centric linguistic and cultural imperialism, epistemic hegemony, racism, and neoliberalism, which are tied to colonialism and imperialism. In light of this issue, I argue that…

This interview provides a panoramic view of Antony's research interests, which includes his language-related experiences of early life, his study at UCLA, the PhD dissertation research he conducted under Lyle Bachman's supervision, and his idea of fairness. Given the specific context in which the interview was conducted, the interviewer approached…

There is no denying that English is an international language, and as such we must expect to encounter a multitude of local varieties: not only the national Englishes, such as American, British, Australian, etc. but also an even greater number of learner Englishes, such as French English, Brazilian English, Japanese English and the like. But the…

In this article, we take up and expand upon a number of issues of linguistic theory raised in Ursula Ritzau's recent article "Learner language and polylanguaging: how language students' ideologies relate to their written language use" published in the "Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism". The present critique is…

The article by Amaral and Roeper (this issue; henceforth A&R) presents many interesting ideas about first and second language acquisition as well as some experimental data convincingly illustrating the difference between production and comprehension. The article extends the concept of Universal Bilingualism proposed in Roeper (1999) to second…

Bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA) has been considered a possible mechanism of contact-induced change in several recent studies (Siegel, 2008, p. 117; Satterfield, 2005, p. 2075; Thomason, 2001, p. 148; Yip & Matthews, 2007, p.15). There is as yet little consensus on the question, with divergent views regarding both BFLA at the individual…

Sowden's article raises a number of questions concerning English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and criticizes it as a simplified and culturally neutral means of communication. In this response, I address the issues concerning the conceptualization and use of ELF as well as the implications for ELT. I provide up-to-date evidence of ELF research and show…

Jurgen Meisel's (JM) article is literally thought-provoking, especially for the issues that one can raise out of the central position that he develops, viz., "although bilingual acquisition in situations of language contact can be argued to be of significant importance for explanations of grammatical change, reanalysis affecting parameter settings…

Jurgen Meisel argues that "grammatical variation...can be described...in terms of parametric variation", and--crucially for his arguments in this paper--that "parameter settings do not change across the lifespan". To this extent he adopts the standard generative view, but he then departs from what he calls "the literature on historical…

This essay explores some of the areas in which language teaching and intercultural education overlap. We position language teaching as embedded within sociocultural practices and shaped by attitudes toward bilingualism and native vs. nonnative speaker status. Specifically, we question language practices that exclude or downplay the benefits of…