Focusing on language education policies in Bangladesh, this article shows how the policies have distracted people's attention from the harms inflicted on the country's Indigenous communities and their languages. I discuss two factors that have contributed to policy distractions in this context: a strong form of Bangla linguistic nationalism and a…

Singapore is an ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse nation-state that has always practiced deliberate language policy and planning. The bilingual education policy, introduced shortly after the young nation's independence has led to the emergence of English-knowing bilinguals who are proficient in both English and their ethnically…

The English language can be compared to the hydra from ancient mythology as it is an unstoppable force throughout the world. Using this comparison, this study examines the history of English in Japan, English linguistic imperialism, and its impact on contemporary Japan. Five myths of English language teaching are used as a framework, referred to…

This paper discusses the challenges of defining coherence in the context of oral language assessment literacy and proposes that better understanding of the construct can be achieved through a systemic-functional linguistic lens. Coherence is taken to be a foundational quality of written and spoken discourse and is a standard feature in the…

"A Dictionary of Contemporary Figurative Language" is meant to be an appendix to an earlier, more comprehensive work: ED648945, "A Dictionary and Thesaurus of Contemporary Figurative Language and Metaphor 2024." This appendix simply updates the dictionary of that previous work to better reflect the language used during the 2024…

I argue that the variation within and across contexts detailed by Shin & Miller is indicative of a broader phenomenon in which morphosyntax and the discourse context are intertwined, including elements like perspective, discourse relations, information structure, and common ground. Appealing to independent evidence highlighting the role of…

This article explores the program "Inglés Sin Límites" (English Without Limits), established in Uruguay to bridge teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) instruction between urban and rural schools. As part of these efforts, the Godparents Project was created to develop a network of practices in which educators in rural schools…

Language tests, including international high-stakes English proficiency tests widely used around the world, are to be viewed as ideological constructs connected with power relations and center-periphery demarcations at different social levels. In this paper, we examine the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) as an instance of…

The practices of sorting things out and bringing things together, which I summarise under the term relanguaging, sit between fluid, situated languaging practices and the administrative standard grid in education that relies on bounded, named languages. Relanguaging, I argue, was invisible to socio- and applied linguists' analytical vision because…

The field of language documentation continues to grow, but an historic split between sign language documentation and spoken language documentation persists. In order to fully understand the linguistic context within a community, it can be necessary to overcome this split by designing language documentation projects to address threatened and…

Mathematics education in post-colonial Malta is experienced bilingually by teachers and students. I was recently involved in the publication of a bilingual (English / Maltese) glossary of mathematics terms relevant to early childhood and elementary classes. Work on the glossary involved compiling already existing Maltese mathematics terms and also…

In Canada, the federally funded Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program follows a task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach using the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB). Aligned with other communicative language approaches, TBLT de-emphasizes systematic instruction of the morpho-syntactic elements of language. Although TBLT…

This paper discusses how the political interplay between English-in-society and English-in-education policy in the Global South(s) facilitates what I term 'English as a subtle technology of policy distraction' in postcolonial spheres that were colonised by languages other than English. 'English as a subtle technology of policy distraction' is…

While language education programs were created with an equity stance in mind--with the goals of increasing access and facilitating academic success for ethnically and linguistically marginalized students--the larger educational context has compromised access for multiply marginalized students. Recognizing a need for more complex understandings of…

University classrooms are increasingly populated by students with diverse nationalities and native languages (L1). The growing number of students in English-led classrooms who speak English as a second or lower language (L2) may face added difficulties in understanding the specific task objectives or directions, as explained by native-…