As US classrooms approach a decade of response to No Child Left Behind, many questions and concerns remain around the education of those labeled as "English language learners," in both English as a Second Language and bilingual education classrooms. A national policy context where standardized tests dominate curriculum and instruction…

Since the language used by people has the potential to signal a membership in a discourse community, it is significant that prospective teachers speak the appropriate social language to be able to claim a strong membership in the community of teachers. This qualitative study explores a group of pre-service teachers' professional language use and…

Language is the most immediate tool of inclusion into a social group and as such is central in creating, understanding and participating in the group. Language policy can serve, establish and organise such groups, and to assure that they are maintained and implemented for posterity. Language policy in education is imperative for a group to build…

Research and development of a new type of scoring rubric for the integrated speaking tasks of "TOEFL iBT"® are described. These "analytic rating guides" could be helpful if tasks modeled after those in TOEFL iBT were used for formative assessment, a purpose which is different from TOEFL iBT's primary use for admission…

This article discusses a study on how language use and language development can be promoted through engaging students in different participation roles in board games. Theoretically, the study is grounded in sociocultural perspectives of activity theory and the role of play as a form of human motivation. A group of Grade 4 primary students learning…

This article examines the unique contributions that bilingual and bilingually credentialed teachers make to the instruction of emergent bilinguals in the United States. This mixed methodological study involved 474 teachers in Arizona, California, and Texas, which represent distinct language policy contexts. Results revealed that, irrespective of…

This article investigates how Japanese university students perceive Japan's domestic diversity and understand the role of English within that context. Surveys and interviews with Japanese students reveal how they reflect on their own experiences with diversity in their past English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes and also help to explore the…

A challenge of today's teacher preparation programmes is to educate teachers about families formed through international adoption and of the challenges they face, in order to meet their educational needs. This population has a unique developmental history affected by pre- and post-adoption conditions which stand to impact on learning experiences…

This study examines the educational and societal experiences that lead students to maintain or lose their heritage language to see how these experiences affect the language choices that young Latino/a adults are making after high school. Examining the experiences that lead language learners to lose or maintain their native language is important…

Regional dossiers aim at providing a concise description and basic statistics about minority language education in a specific region of Europe. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements, and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects, such as the…

Technology-informed approaches to L2 research and teaching have prompted great interest by both researchers and practitioners alike. This book highlights the relationship between digitally-mediated technologies and second language pragmatics by presenting exemplary applications of technology for both research and pedagogy. Part I presents…

"Voices of Pedagogical Development" is a collection of articles written by teacher-researchers at the University of Jyväskylä Language Centre. It shares the fruits of their ideas and development work in the areas of academic literacies, new forms of teaching and learning, and internationalisation. Part one aims at establishing and…

Studies on academic biliteracy have had a tendency to focus on multilingual scholars' current status of academic biliteracy and not on their prior experiences in their home countries. However, these experiences are vital to understanding their current status of academic biliteracy because the multilingual scholars' distinctive experiences in…

Formulaic language is widely recognized to be of central importance to fluent and idiomatic language use. However, the mechanics of how formulaic language is acquired are not well understood. Some researchers (e.g. Nick Ellis) believe that the chunking inherent in formulaic language drives the language learning process. Others (e.g. Wray) claim…

The author, a teacher educator, explains that because of a lack of training in language studies, many teachers do not view language as linguists do. She identifies three misconceptions (and the implications they have for English language learners) that still persist in education: Standard English is the best and most correct form of English,…