The premise of this paper is that the interactional practices constituting teacher-student interaction and language learning are interdependent in that the substance of learners' language knowledge is inextricably tied to their extended involvement in the regularly occurring interactional practices constituting their specific contexts of learning.…

This article reviews federal language policies and provincial curriculum documents as they relate to Allophones and their access to French as a Second Official Language (FSOL) programs across Canada. Results of a detailed document analysis reveal that policies provide obstacles to access for allophone immigrants to Canada who seek to learn both…

The purpose of this paper, which builds on an earlier paper published in this Journal (Vol. 20, No. 6), is to develop the discussion around how English has been taught, used and perceived in Kenya, using data gathered from a small second-level English-medium school in Kenya. The complex relationships between language and identity are at work in…

Hardness of hearing or deafness is the number one disability in the United States. The United States also has an extremely diverse population, including a growing Hispanic population. Based on these facts, physical educators need to find ways to help their students to overcome language and cultural barriers in order to ensure learning. One way to…

Research on the acquisition of Spanish's two copulas, "ser" and "estar," provides an understanding of the interaction among syntax, semantics, pragmatics, morphology, and vocabulary during development (e.g., Geeslin, 2003a, 2003b; Gunterman, 1992; Ryan & Lafford, 1992). Recent research suggests that linguistic features in the surrounding discourse…

This study investigated the effects of a metacognitive, process-based approach to teaching second language (L2) listening over a semester. Participants (N = 106) came from six intact sections of French as a second language (FSL) courses. The experimental group (n = 59) listened to texts using a methodology that led learners through the…

This article argues for the embodied and environmentally embedded nature of second language acquisition (SLA). Through fine-grained analysis of interaction using Goodwin's (2003a) concept of "symbiotic gesture"--gesture coupled with its rich environmental context to produce complex social action--we illustrate how a tutor, learner, and grammar…

This paper contains three parts. In the first part, what it means to be bilingual in sign language and the spoken (majority) language is explained, and similarities as well as differences with hearing bilinguals are discussed. The second part examines the biculturalism of deaf people. Like hearing biculturals, they take part, to varying degrees,…

The widespread implementation of newborn hearing screening and advances in amplification technologies (including cochlear implants) have fundamentally changed the educational landscape for deaf learners. These changes are discussed in terms of their impact on sign bilingual education programs with a focus on the relationships between language and…

Although portfolios in writing in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning are alternative tools, the portfolio process mainly concerns the decisions of language teachers rather than students' perceptions of portfolios. The present study aims to descriptively measure the perceptions of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students towards…

Foreign language (FL) education has been marked by a monolingual principle that has favoured "intralingual" methodologies. Bakhtin's view of language interillumination--that languages throw light on each other--challenges such language teaching practices radically. Using conversation analysis methods, this article examines transcripts of…

This paper gives a detailed account of an analysis carried out at the French National Skiing and Mountaineering School from August 2008 to June 2009 to assess the language needs of French mountain guides. A targeted literature review highlighted two main points to be taken into account in the design of this language needs analysis: target…

The development of both the materials for an intermediate-level hybrid German writing course and the software in a virtual learning environment for the course may be viewed as activity systems. Viewing the individual components of each system as interrelated enables us to conceptualize the complexities of the development process, which goes well…

The teaching of foreign language advanced grammar (AG) at the college level nowadays continues largely to focus on form, with little attention to its functions and meanings. The practice agrees with neither the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (National Standards, 2006) nor the advances made in basic language teaching…

The present study investigates the syntactic competence of bilingual Portuguese-German returnees who have lost regular contact with their L2 (German). The main criterion which distinguishes the participants is the age of input loss. This allows their division into two main groups: speakers who lost German input during early childhood (between ages…