Second language acquisition (SLA) research offers valuable insight on how languages are learned and how they coexist and influence each other. Sign language learners offer unique perspectives on SLA, allowing researchers to test theories that are otherwise constrained by access to only one modality. Current literature on sign language learning…

Formal language learning has fallen dramatically in recent years even as the UK has become more diverse. In this report, Megan Bowler from the University of Oxford considers the benefits that learning a language provides and assesses the current state of play in schools and universities. She ends with 10 practical recommendations for rejuvenating…

Taking a multi-level perspective on language-in-public-space policy, this study investigates the way Tunisia's dominant languages are dealt with in three independent but interrelated activities of language policy: official texts, public talk, and the actual practices of business actors in five commercial districts in metropolitan Tunis. Detailed…

Given that societies across the globe are increasingly multicultural and multilingual, the notion of communicative competence grounded in constricting definitions of national cultures and languages reflects neither our instructional realities nor the sociolinguistic reality of the languages and cultures we teach. To foster students' development of…

In 1981, Sweden was the first country in the world to entitle deaf pupils to a bimodal-bilingual education. However, drawing from interviews with key past Stockholm teacher trainers and on our own efforts to update teacher training, we note that sign-bilingual teacher training in Sweden has been ad hoc to this day. The interviewees' accounts…

Cosmopolitanism theory was mostly developed separately from the study of multilingualism: while language is central to cosmopolitanism as a practice, only a few scholars focusing on cosmopolitanism have taken a language-centred approach. We further theorise the relationship between cosmopolitanism and translingual practice with our focus on…

This article reports an exploratory study of teacher candidate perception of learning, using video recording in an American Sign Language (ASL) class. Video recording for practice and reflection is relevant to learning ASL, a visual language. One advantage of recording video for learning ASL with mobile devices instead of computers is the larger…

This book challenges the reader to consider issues of language and linguistic discrimination as they impact world language education. Using the nexus of race, language, and education as a lens through which one can better understand the role of the world language education classroom as both a setting of oppression and as a potential setting for…

This article investigates what is commonly called multilingual writing. Based on case studies from Mali, and drawing on a number of West African settings, it argues that in fact, not all 'multilingual' writing is in effect multilingual. The article proposes a two-tiered classification of types of writing, based on linguistic properties of texts…

Linguistic landscapes have proven to be intriguing foci of sociolinguistic research in and of themselves, given language in public spaces indexes broader sociolinguistic processes, struggles, and policies. This paper, however, trials linguistic landscape as a methodological tool for research that solicits and analyses metalinguistic talk --…

In recent years, robots have increasingly been implemented as tutors in both first- and second-language education. The field of robot-assisted language learning (RALL) is developing rapidly. Studies have been published targeting different languages, age groups, and aspects of language and using different robots and methodologies. The present…

In this reply to Salverda (2016), we address a critique of the claims made in our recent study of real-time processing of American Sign Language (ASL) signs using a novel visual world eye-tracking paradigm (Lieberman, Borovsky, Hatrak, & Mayberry, 2015). Salverda asserts that our data do not support our conclusion that native signers and…

Lieberman, Borovsky, Hatrak, and Mayberry (2015) used a modified version of the visual-world paradigm to examine the real-time processing of signs in American Sign Language. They examined the activation of phonological and semantic competitors in native signers and late-learning signers and concluded that their results provide evidence that the…

Why should second and foreign language teachers tune into instructed second language acquisition (ISLA)? There are many reasons, several of which have already been addressed in this forum. This paper examines one important benefit of keeping abreast of the field, namely, the opportunity for classroom instructors to extract pedagogical insights…

This article addresses the debate about the status of American Sign Language (ASL) as an example of ideological beliefs that impact linguistic judgments and policies. It also discusses the major challenges to the status of ASL with respect to formal legislative recognition, its utility as a medium of instruction, and its status as a legitimate…