German is a pluricentric language with many standard and nonstandard varieties. Students of German are usually unaware of its rich regional variation, and studies attribute this to limited resources and instructional time (van Kerckvoorde, 2012). The "DACH" model of teaching German, which includes linguistic and cultural elements from…

A new generation is growing up who have known the internet for their entire lives. More people incorporate social media into more aspects of our lives, including how we learn and negotiate our identities. While formal online classrooms such as MOOCs are a part of the picture, learning also occurs in informal settings such as affinity groups'…

This study investigated the predictions of two approaches to second language acquisition. According to the usage-based approach, learner knowledge results from the strengths and weaknesses of input-driven statistical learning. According to the learner-varieties approach, pragmatic communication principles and language-internal constraints play…

As a result of the fact that judgments of non-native speech are closely tied to social biases, oral proficiency ratings are susceptible to error because of rater background and social attitudes. In the present study we seek first to estimate the variance attributable to rater background and attitudinal variables on novice raters' assessments of L2…

Metadiscourse is essential in establishing pragmatically effective academic written communication. However, little is known about how metadiscourse is used in written texts produced by tertiary level second language learners. This corpus-based linguistic research study aims to explore the frequencies and usages of metadiscourse markers in student…

Drawing on linguistic anthropological notions of language ideologies and sociolinguistic approaches to stance, this study examines the meaning-making resources through which Spanish heritage language (HL) learners orient toward ideological perspectives on language value and linguistic expertise in classroom interaction. Part of a larger…

Teaching mixed methods and action research to graduate students has great advantages but also poses interesting challenges. The purpose of this article is to make transparent the process by which a mixed methods research instructor helped inform a student-researcher of the limitations in a pilot study that was compromised by methodology, including…