Argues that some important aspects of listening as an interactive skill have been neglected in second-language teaching, including the receipt tokens "yeah,""mm hm," and "mm," and that such items should be taught as part of the development of conversational skills. Characteristics of these items' placement in talk sequences, prosodic shape, pause…

Investigates the language use and literacy practices of 36 children from a Gujarati- and Urdu-speaking Muslim community in Northeast London. These experiences are explored in the children's three-generation families, in the community, and in school interviews, recordings, and observations. (Author/VWL)

Reports on a research project conducted in Mauritius that aimed to investigate patterns of language use, language choice, and language attitudes of Mauritian adolescents in full-time education. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire and interviews from a sample of the secondary school population. (Author/VWL)

Group work offers a viable alternative to the teacher-centered, direct instructional model. However, many teachers have been reluctant to incorporate extensive group work into their teaching repertoire, citing concerns about the amount of English used and off-task behavior. This study reports the results of an analysis of five conversations of…

In this paper, the authors explore a methodology for assessing learners' meta-pragmatic awareness of variation in French language use. "Meta-pragmatic awareness" is defined as knowledge of the social meaning of variable second language forms and awareness of the ways in which these forms mark different aspects of social contexts, and is therefore…

The development of pragmatic and sociolinguistic rules of language use is important for language learners. It is necessary to understand and create language that is appropriate to the situations in which one is functioning, because failure to do so may cause users to miss key points that are being communicated or to have their messages…

The multifaceted ways in which English Language Learners (ELLs) engage in "acts of identity" (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985) through their language use have created new challenges for ESL pedagogy. Heterogeneous identities have called into question the native speaker construct and the assumed links between ethnicity and language expertise.…

This article describes a learning context in which the first grade classroom teacher creates a learning community where she uses different teaching strategies to encourage children's second language use and learning. The first graders share, discuss, and learn both the second language (German) and content.

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the applicability of task-based language teaching (TBLT) to state secondary foreign language classes. After discussion of method in general, TBLT is defined and its particularities described. Tasks are assessed as the basis for syllabus and then as the basis for method. In both cases, the proposals are…

Heritage languages (HL) are language spoken by the children of immigrants or by those who immigrated to a country when young. The purpose of this article is to briefly review what is known about heritage language development over time and to identify some gaps in people's knowledge. In this article, the authors consider three aspects: how much HL…

The social reform and opening-up in Chinese society in the last three decades have resulted in overall changes in almost every aspect of social life of its people. As an important indicator in these changes, English has become an important tool in education for students to move ahead to a higher level of schooling, and better jobs in the…

As global migrations of both teachers and students have increased, so has the need to re-learn English in response to local parlances. Thus, the use of formal and informal language styles, the masking of accents, and the understanding of the differential use of certain specific words, expressions, and the like become critical for teachers and…

Taking into consideration some gaps observed in SLA research--noticing, recasts, input enhancement (IE),…-- and in CALL/CMC research, a study was conducted among 12 advanced FL Spanish learners to assess whether and how, by communicating with a Spanish native speaker in 5 chat-room sessions, their language competence would develop in the following…

With President George W. Bush's unprecedented call in January 2006 to expand the foreign language capacity of the United States, it has become clear that languages other than English (LOE) are of great interest to public policy in the United States. Yet the language capacity of the United States remains poorly documented. The 2000 General Social…

Luxembourg is a trilingual country where residents communicate in Luxembourgish, French and German concurrently. Children therefore study these languages at primary school. In this paper I explore how six eight-year-old Luxembourgish children use and learn German, French and English in formal and informal settings over a period of one year. Their…