When teaching foreign languages to very young learners, motivation is an issue that needs to be taken into account even more than in the case of any other age group. Teaching materials and students' textbooks used in schools and preschools, however carefully crafted, often fail to cater for the genuine interests of children and to invoke intrinsic…

This study focuses on teacher talk in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching in China. Framed against China's current focus on "thinking, imagination and innovation" as stated in the National English Curriculum Standards (NECS), this paper reports the findings of a qualitative study aimed at understanding how the…

As linguistic diversity is increasing in schools worldwide, research is needed to examine how to modify teaching and learning contexts in response to emerging multilingual students' different needs. Grounded in sociocultural theory, this study examined how teachers used discourse differently to respond to diverse students' needs as they…

It has often been found that the 'white' native English instructors were the preferred facilitators in an EFL context because of their accent and fluency in the English language however teacher's competency and by extension teacher's empathy with their students remain overlooked from the initial application and hiring process of potential…

After first discussing the ideologies (standard and monolingual) implicit in language education in the United States, we argue for a necessary ideological shift in the way multiple languages and other forms of semiotic communication are understood, used, and supported in preschool for emergent bilinguals. We present examples from a preschool study…

Although the number of emergent bilinguals (EBs), also known as English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. K-12 schools is growing at an increasing rate, K-12 mainstream teachers remain predominantly white and monolingual and receive little training for working with such learners. In addition, many states mandate "English-only" policies…

The U.S. government encourages the study of critical languages spoken in geographic areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security and the global economy through a variety of discretionary grants and scholarship programs. U.S. students are traditionally underrepresented in the study of these languages; however, many of the nation's K-12…

This article reveals how center-periphery relations have unfolded, over time, in language policy processes in one nation--Timor-Leste--on the global periphery. We take a "longue durée" perspective on the language policy processes at work in this historical context, showing how different regimes of language were imposed, in the past, by…

This study examines the relationship between the functions and patterns of language choice in EFL classrooms in a Kuwaiti primary school. It applies the overall order model, specifically the medium of classroom interaction, to identify three patterns of language choice: an English monolingual medium, an Arabic monolingual medium and a bilingual…

The teaching and learning of Modern Hebrew outside of Israel is essential to Jewish education and identity. One of the most contested issues in Modern Hebrew pedagogy is the use of code-switching between Modern Hebrew and learners' first language. Moreover, this is one of the longest running disputes in the broader field of second language…

This study is aimed at describing the levels of code switching on EFL students' daily conversation. The topic is chosen due to the facts that code switching phenomenon are commonly found in daily speech of Indonesian community such as in teenager talks, television serial dialogues and mass media. Therefore, qualitative data were collected by using…

In this article, we establish direct links between language policy on the one hand and assessment in multilingual contexts on the other hand. We illustrate the bi-directional relationship with the examples of the USA, Canada, and the Basque Country. That comparison is placed in the context of the changing views about the use of languages in…

This article explores the interactional co-construction of identities among two first-grade students learning Spanish as a third language in a Spanish-English dual language classroom. Drawing on ethnographic and interactional data, the article focuses on a single interaction between these two "Spanish learners" and two of their…

This study investigated the impacts of the immersive multimedia learning strategy with peer support on production skills in reading and speaking. Moreover, the effects of it on performance were investigated by student achievement. The quasi-experimental design with post-test was employed for the study. 80 first-year university students enrolled in…

This article discusses what is at stake in teaching works written in "Spanglish" in Spanish departments and what teaching such works might mean for students and the scholarly community at large. This article primarily comes out of the author's experiences teaching "Spanglish" works in Spanish courses at a major research…