This paper analyses classroom discourse in Finnish EFL classrooms where English is the object of study and content-based (Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)) classrooms where non-language subjects are taught in English. The students in both groups are Finnish teenagers. Approaching the data from a discourse-pragmatic perspective, the…

This article has two purposes: the first is to give a voice to school leaders in official-language minority schools; the second is to present an empirically based critical analysis of some of the main current models in the field of educational leadership in order to verify whether they are relevant in official-language minority settings. This…

In the past few decades, new governmental efforts to internationalize Japanese higher education have been in progress. One move has been to provide assistance to study abroad programs using English as the language of instruction. Though seen as an effective internationalization strategy, the consequences are by no means culturally neutral. This…

Despite American schools administrators' refusal to accept the language of African-American students and their overzealousness to frame language and literacy skills in terms of an "achievement gap," African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the language of African-American imagination and reality. This article discusses the characteristics of…

This paper examines the choices parents have made regarding language of instruction in their children's classrooms, particularly in California after the implementation of Proposition 227. The data for this study are drawn from a 2-year ethnography of eight Latino families from an urban immigrant Latino community. The parents in the study held a…

A longitudinal study has been conducted to explore the impact of a new language policy for Hong Kong secondary schools on science learning. According to this policy, only schools that recruit the best 25% of students can teach science in English, the students' second language, while the other schools have to teach science in Chinese, the students'…

This paper draws on post-structuralist theories on language and identity to explore the shifting language attitudes of 15 "black" students over the course of their undergraduate studies at a historically "white" South African university. All the students speak an indigenous language as their first language. Those students who…

This article revisits a question posed by Hyland [(1997). Is EAP necessary? A survey of Hong Kong undergraduates. "Asian Journal of English Language Teaching, 7," 77-99] in the Hong Kong higher education context: Is EAP necessary? The article presents the overall findings of a large-scale, multi-faceted investigation into the language…

This article reports part of the findings of a longitudinal study on the effects of a language policy implemented in 1998 on the science learning of junior secondary students. It focuses on the effects of the instructional medium on the instructional activities in science lessons. According to students' responses to a questionnaire, EMI (English…

A group of new studies is providing fresh evidence of what many researchers have been saying all along: English immersion has more political appeal than educational merit. Dr. Amy Merickel, co-author of "Effects of the Implementation of Proposition 227 on the Education of English Learners K-12," says it is not possible given the data…

This paper reports on the implementation of an ambitious bilingual instructional programme in the P'urhepecha-speaking region of Michoacan state in Mexico, the Meseta Tarasca. A curriculum of indigenous language preservation and cultural affirmation, overturning the previous Spanish-only programme, has been developed by a group of indigenous…

This article describes a small-scale research project in two schools using content and language integrated learning (CLIL), one English and one Austrian, where in both cases there had been considerable misgivings about appropriate forms of assessment to match the different kinds of language skill developed in the CLIL process. Teachers were…

This purpose of this article is to present a qualitative inquiry into the genesis of sociolinguistics and the contributions of eight sociolinguistic pioneers. This inquiry, based on an historical interpretation of events, reformulates the concept of validation as the social construction of a scientific knowledge base, and explicates three themes…

This article investigates the process of change with reference to Chinese lecturers of English taking part in a one-month intensive teacher training programme. The programme was initiated in response to a government directive that 20% of all university courses in Chinese national universities should be taught in English. The article sets the…

The author suggests that English-only classrooms are not only the implicit goal of much language policy in the United States, but also assumed to be already the case, an ironic situation in light of composition's historical role as "containing" language differences in U.S. higher education. He suggests that the myth of linguistic…