Children come to school with the language of their families and communities. For many children, this means that they speak a nonstandard dialect, an English dialect not used as the primary means of instruction in schools. Examples of dialects include African American English (AAE; i.e., Ebonics), Hawaiian Creole, Hispanic English, and Southern…

In "True to the Language Game", Keith Gilyard, one of the major African American figures to emerge in language and cultural studies, makes his most seminal work available in one volume. This collection of new and previously published essays contains Gilyard's most relevant scholarly contributions to deliberations about linguistic diversity,…

Classroom mathematics in Malta is generally communicated through code-switching between the national language Maltese and the country's second language English. This is because not all mathematical words have Maltese equivalents and furthermore, mathematics textbooks are UK publications. I consider the language used for spoken communication and…

In this issue, aside from the introduction, there are six papers on classroom code-switching (CS), covering a wide spectrum of geographic and pedagogic contexts: two from Africa focussing on switching in content subject lessons; two from Taiwan looking at CS in EFL language subject classrooms; and two further papers, one looking at written CS and…

Because digital language represents such a large part of the primary discourse of today's adolescents, it is not surprising that the style of electronic communication is "seeping into their schoolwork." According to a recent study published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, in partnership with the College Board's National Commission…

This article poses the question of how educators can put into practice the valorization of the vernacular and its use as a pedagogical resource. It provides a critical sociolinguistic orientation toward the use of Spanglish in schools. It gives a short descriptive overview of the linguistic features of Spanglish and responds to some of the…

Many teachers lack the linguistic training required to build on the language skills that African American students from dialectally diverse backgrounds bring to school. When students correctly use the language patterns of their communities, such teachers may diagnose language deficits and attempt to teach them the "right" grammar. Research has…

The article discusses relationships between codeswitching and identities in classroom peer group talk among students from a variety of Asian and European backgrounds who were studying English in Australia. The article focusses on talk that, in being concealed from the teacher through codeswitching, allows expression of identities that are not…

This comprehensive volume describes evidence-based strategies for supporting English language learners (ELLs) by promoting meaningful communication and language use across the curriculum. Leading experts explain how and why learning is different for ELLs and pinpoint specific best practices for the classroom, illustrated with vivid examples.…

This paper deals with linguistic diversity as it occurs in a conversation over dinner between three young Turkish-Danish men living in Denmark. I argue that terms like "bilingual" or "multilingual" are inappropriate in order to describe this verbal interaction because these terms presuppose that linguistic production is divided…

This article examines the challenges of teaching basic writing today as students come to the classroom with the basic fluency of digital natives but have the same need for learning writing and critical thinking skills that has traditionally marked basic writers. While most basic writers are adept at accessing information digitally, they are not as…

Linguistics is a subject that has remained largely confined to the academy, rather than being integrated into school curricula. This is unfortunate but not surprising, as although some teacher education programs include courses on linguistics, it is not comprehensively integrated into teacher education, so it is largely absent from the curriculum.…

This contribution discusses findings and hypotheses from empirical data of naturally-occurring codeswitching. The discussion is framed by some comparisons of the approaches of contact linguists and psycholinguists to bilingual production data. However, it emphasizes the relevance of naturally-occurring codeswitching to the theoretical questions…

This article considers how teachers can begin to reconcile their value for creativity with a pedagogy that supports it. First, teachers' experiences of finding themselves caught in the middle between valuing creativity and helping students conform to the constraints of the classroom are considered. Next, the role that constraints play in…

Matched-guise experiments have passed their 40th year as a powerful attitudinal research tool, and they are becoming more relevant and useful as technology is applied to language research. Combining the specificity of conversation analysis with the generalizability of social psychology research, technological innovations allow the measurement of…