With its own national language, Luxembourgish, and three languages of administration, French, German and Luxembourgish, Luxembourg has long been a very multilingual country. The nature of this multilingualism is now changing, due to the rising proportion of migrants in the country, who now make up 43% of the resident population. The changing…

All around the world, communities have been experiencing linguistic erosion in varying degrees, as English usage--and use of other ex-colonial languages, like French in francophone Africa, Spanish in the bulk of Latin America, and Portuguese in Angola, Brazil, Mozambique, and East Timur--steadily surpass local language usage in institutions of…

This article considers explicit knowledge and processes in second language (L2) learning from a usage-based theoretical perspective. It reports on the long-term development of a single instructed adult learner's use of two L2 constructions, the German Perfekt of "gehen" ("go," "walk") and "fahren"…

This essay is an empirical account of English language use, across three continents, in 40 Tuning and analogous discipline-based statements of desired demonstrated competences and learning outcomes in higher education. It is primarily concerned with lexical and semantic matters, takes the perspective of the student as the primary reader and…

Our language changes very rapidly, accompanying political, social and cultural trends, as well as the evolution of science and technology. The Internet, especially the social media, has accelerated this process of change. This poses a severe challenge for both human beings and natural language processing (NLP) systems, which usually only model a…

This study is an examination of how two popular magazines, "National Geographic" and "Life" magazine, and one educational journal, "Social Education," perform the work of representation in general, and representing China more specifically. Drawing on postcolonial theorists (Blaut, 1993; Said, 1978; Tchen, 1999; wa…

The paper looks at the communicative aspect of tropes and the use to which mass media discourse puts it. Necessity to study tropes in discourse boils down to the fact that metaphoric patterns prove to be effective in helping language users be cooperative in communication. Attention to the pragmatics of tropes functioning in mass media discourse as…

The European framework for "Key Competences for Lifelong Learning" the term "mathematical competence" means the ability to develop and apply mathematical thinking in order to solve a range of problems in everyday life. In this context, the way prospective teachers perceive mathematics learning becomes significant. The aim of…

Background: A potential problem of low-stakes large-scale assessments such as the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is low test-taking engagement. The present study pursued two goals in order to better understand conditioning factors of test-taking disengagement: First, a model-based approach was used to…

Roberge defines the 1.5 Generation as "those who immigrate as young children and have life experiences that span two or more countries, cultures and languages" (2009, p. 4). In US and Canadian higher education, the term has gained considerable recognition, with the scope of the term broadening among some educators to include…

Literacy, and particularly reading, is critical to success in schooling and full participation in contemporary societies. As one of the primary skills needed to develop proficiency in a language, the study of reading in additional languages has attracted significant research attention. Focusing on behaviourally visible and locally occasioned…

As a third world country and a former British colony, Bangladesh has seen a dramatic upsurge in the use of the English language. Built on the concept of imperialistic aspects of the English language, this paper draws on responses from anonymous survey results and interviews and attempts to provide deeper insights into the global aspects of English…

In spite of English being regarded as the second most important language in Malaysia, it is still treated as a foreign language inevitably. The recently introduced Dual Language Progamme (henceforth DLP) which uses English as the medium of instruction in teaching Mathematics and Science is alleged to be a reflection of the less successful English…

This article illustrates one professor's experiment with using Snapchat in a university EFL classroom. Snapchat has become impossible to ignore and this study proves that it can be beneficial to students. This study shows how the use of Snapchat can engage students and encourage them to practice English outside the classroom.

The purpose of this small-scale study was to examine whether language is a factor in the reporting of bullying behavior by young English language learners enrolled in an early childhood program of an English-medium school in China. Further investigated was whether an English-only language policy affects the reporting of bullying behavior.…