This study investigated more than 3600 online comments responding to an incident in 2019 where a controversial memo was sent to instruct Chinese graduate students at a US university not to speak Chinese in the department. A text analysis based on Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software showed that these comments included more negative-emotion…

This study investigated the intercultural inclusion of international students in Saudi universities, especially the language and culture barriers while interacting with local peers within and beyond classroom settings. Qualitative data gathered through interviews with 12 international students revealed that the Arabic language, shared human…

This ethnographic study reports four teenage Chinese EAL students' learning journey in a UK independent school. Due to linguistic barriers, they encountered significant challenges in their social lives and academic studies. The school arranged EAL lessons to improve students' English proficiency. However, participants were concerned that the EAL…

This paper discusses the interactional construction of personal trajectories of migrant children with a focus on its implications for the enhancement of children's agency. The discussion is supported by the analysis of three extracts transcripts of audio or video-recorded classroom activities that illustrate the main forms of facilitation of…

The term 'mediation' has become central to intercultural language education, a fact that is evident from the attention given to mediation activities and strategies in the revised descriptors of the "Common European Framework of Reference for Languages" (North et al. 2017). However, what is meant by 'mediation' is not always clear to…

This paper investigates the language fluency problems of skilled immigrants from mainland China to Canada. It capitalises on interview data to explore the relationships between Chinese immigrants' identities, second language practices, and language skills. It reports the informants' difficulty in integrating into their workplaces and their…

Children and young people from migrated families often learn host languages faster than their parents might do, and from very young ages they help their parents, families or community members by translating or interpreting, known as child language brokering (CLB). Language brokers need to mediate with different languages in different contexts and…