Drawing on sociocultural theories of language and literacy practice and Curdt-Christiansen's theoretical framework of family language policy (FLP), this multiple case study investigates the perceptions, practices, and challenges regarding heritage language maintenance (HLM) of Chinese immigrant families in a mid-sized Midwestern American city. The…

Inference-making is integral to reading comprehension, defined as information 'retrieved or generated during reading to fill in information left implicit in a text'. However, there are few studies regarding the inferencing of young emergent multilinguals that account for multilingualism and culture, attend to the learning processes influenced by…

This article reports on a study investigating the role of scientific concepts in the metapragmatic awareness of Norwegian primary EFL learners following a four-week instructional intervention on requesting informed by sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 2012/1934). Through introducing pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic dimensions of requesting, the…

Aims: Since many Saudi ESL students studying abroad have limited vocabulary and grammar knowledge and poor reading comprehension skills, this article proposes the integration of linguistic landscapes (LLs) in teaching English to Saudi students studying abroad to supplement the English language courses and textbooks they study. Definition of LLs:…

Translanguaging theories emphasize a fluid, dynamic view of language and differ from code-switching/mixing theories by de-centring the analytic focus from the language(s) being used in the interaction to the speakers who are making meaning and constructing original and complex discursive practices. Trans-semiotizing theories further broaden the…

This qualitative interpretive study carried out with four EFL teachers in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course at a private university in Bogotá, Colombia addresses the disconnect that exists between curricular content and the life of students in education. From our understanding of literacy as a sociocultural practice, we proposed a…

This is a qualitative case study that explores conversational interactions during book-reading practices in a Mandarin-speaking Chinese American family between the mother and her two young children. The study employs a sociocultural lens and the concept of translanguaging to describe the characteristics of interactional practices during book…

Conceptualization of foreign language teaching as a cross-cultural interaction means engaging learners in various cultural mediations. Language use becomes a form of interpretative architecture of a target language. Understanding language use from a discursive perspective develops meta-pragmatic awareness and interpretative capacities of learners.…

This study draws on sociocultural perspectives of identity to understand the ways in which Mexican-origin undergraduate students are recruited into the "figured world" of engineering. The analysis of in-depth, ethnographically situated interviews with 14 participants revealed three sets of recurrent discourses in students' accounts of…

This article considers the pedagogical research informed by the writings of L. S. Vygotsky concerned with the teaching and learning of languages beyond the first (L2). Following a brief overview of developments in the application of Vygotskian theory to explicating processes of L2 development in instructional settings, we consider more recent…

This qualitative study utilized sociocultural and heteroglossic perspectives to examine the oral translanguaging practices of four Korean-American first-graders in a Korean heritage language (HL) classroom. The research method was discourse analysis. The students attended all-English American schools during the school week and a Korean HL school…

In order to effectively respond to the increased linguistic and cultural diversity in U.S. schools and close the consistently documented achievement gap between culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students and mainstream students, teachers need to take an asset-based approach and be able to draw on CLD students' entire funds of linguistic…

Drawing on perspectives from sociocultural theory, this article investigates how Christian denominations are represented in Norwegian textbooks of religious education and by young believers. The main finding is that textbooks and young adherents present religion in substantially different ways. While textbooks relate religion to global and…

Reflecting on contributions to this special issue along with my own research, I suggest ways in which sociocultural understandings of peer interactions in multilingual contexts are and should be evolving to encompass the increasingly complex settings that research has come to document. I argue that in order to realize the potential of research in…

This article proposes ways to authentically amplify writer's workshop for emergent bilinguals. Through the study of one bilingual teacher's mediation in teaching, we examined the affordances that translanguaging and transmodal practices have for emergent bilingual students' writing processes. In this case study, we focused on a writing sequence…