Indigenous learners of English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) have historically not been the central focus of TESOL expertise here in Australia, or overseas. Despite moves towards inclusion increasing over the last two decades, there is an ongoing tendency for Indigenous EAL/D learners to remain on the periphery of current TESOL…

The college readiness and standard English proficiency of preservice teachers of color are of increasing concern among those working to foster diversity within the teacher workforce. In this article, the author uses positioning theory to examine standard English proficiency and agency among first-generation Black and Latinx preservice teachers,…

We use language constantly--to communicate our desires, to show our competencies, and to present who we are to the world. In American classrooms, White and wealthy ways of using language often dominate. These ways of using language are sometimes considered right, standard, and professional. Yet our students bring a rich diversity of language use…

This article will focus on sociolinguistic aspects in Terry Pratchett's "The Wee Free Men." In particular we will deal with the interplay of standard and non-standard British English by which the writer highlights cultural stereotypes as well as narrative ones; creating a children's tale with a distinctively adult-like character set.…

This paper explores the identity construction of multilingual and multidialectal middle school students in a semester-long youth participatory action research (YPAR) project. In particular, it moves beyond an emancipatory discourse that views youth identity development from a point of marginalization by drawing on Foucauldian notions of discourse,…

The diversity of language in Australia in pre-invasion times is well attested, with at least 300 distinct languages being spoken along with many dialects. At that time, many Indigenous people were multilingual, often speaking at least four languages. Today many of these languages have been lost, with fewer than 15 being learned by children as a…

Scholars such as Diane Kelly-Riley and Patricia Bizzell have argued that the student writing feature most likely to place a student into a basic writing course is the presence of dialect other than standard academic English. This essay examines how assessment practices can foster students' diverse languages rather than inhibit them. I conducted a…

While we in composition studies may have grown more sensitive to and welcoming of cultural and linguistic differences in the classroom, we remain far from united in pursuits to combat explicitly in our pedagogies the politics of standardized English. To move toward linguistic justice, we call for unified intention and action across our field to…

This article centers on the discursive moves that two adolescent girls in rural Appalachia use to negotiate dominant discourses regarding Appalachian identity and language. The data is drawn from a year-long critical ethnographic teacher-researcher study in a senior English class located within a rural high school in the Appalachian region of the…

Sociolinguistic research on language attitudes has revealed that non-standard accented speakers are usually perceived more negatively than members of the dominant speech community. Few studies, however, have examined whether a speaker's ethnicity, evidenced by nonlinguistic factors such as appearance, may play a role in listeners' perception of…

All educational testing is intended to have consequences, which are assumed to be beneficial, but tests may also have unintended, negative consequences (Messick, 1989). The issue is particularly important in the case of large-scale standardized tests, such as Australia's "National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy" (NAPLAN), the…

This investigation examines how students responded to the content and critical approach in an undergraduate course in Hispanic linguistics titled "Bilingualism in the Spanish-Speaking World." To enhance learning, students participated in one of two high-impact practices (HIPs)--service-learning or a research investigation--as their final…

Language, procedure, and identity are L2 teaching/learning essentials that may promote agency and stimulate synergies among knowledge, practice, and reflection (Diaz Maggioli, 2014; Duff, 2012). This meta-report presents three studies that collectively advance agency and endorse linguistic foundations as enrichment, differentiated instruction as…

This article focuses on two-way immersion (TWI) education and restates two previously expressed cautionary notes about the unexpected costs of such programs for the Latino community and for children who are racialized speakers of nonmainstream varieties of English. Utilizing an analytical framework focused on the process of…

In this article, we review three responses to the study and evaluation of grammar in children who speak nonmainstream dialects of English. Then we introduce a fourth, system-based response that views nonmainstream dialects of English, such as African American English (AAE) and Southern White English (SWE) as made up of "dialect-specific"…