Purpose: This paper describes oral language as a multi-faceted and unconstrained phenomenon, including its social purpose in societies and the implications of this for education. It provides a critique of the concepts of oral language which have come to dominate literacy and language education policy across the Organisation of Economic…

This article aims to identify common errors made by hearing students learning South African Sign Language (SASL) and enhance the understanding of language acquisition in this context. The researchers formulated three hypotheses, attributing errors to vocabulary gaps, misunderstandings due to improper signing, and the dual impact of spoken and…

Parents frequently report that advice from professionals is important in making decisions about how their child with hearing loss will communicate. Little is currently known about how professionals support parents raising children with hearing loss in spoken language multilingual environments, children who are described as d/Deaf multilingual…

Thinking together in primary classrooms has received much scholarly attention in recent years, with a focus on educational dialogue at the forefront of studies concerned with identifying what constitutes effective language for learning. Whilst the expression of explicit reasoning is often discussed, less attention has been given to the role that…

Recent research has shown that a distinct variety of American Sign Language, known as Black ASL, developed in the segregated schools for deaf African Americans in the US South during the pre-civil rights era. Research has also shown that in some respects Black ASL is closer than most white varieties to the standard taught in ASL classes and found…

The current era of globalization and emergence of English as an international language (EIL) has brought about new opportunities for L2 pragmatic learning and teaching. The common view of pragmatic learning as an approximation to native-likeness is changing towards conceiving pragmatic ability as a tool to interact with people of different…

In this study, we revisit the status of English relative to the African languages in South Africa by analysing new national data on the main language spoken outside the home. These data, which derive from the General Household Surveys of 2017 and 2018, complement commonly collected data on the main language spoken within the home. Our analysis…

This study explored the role of early oral language in reading development among adult heritage language (HL) learners to provide insights into the possible developmental pattern of HL reading development. One hundred and ninety-five English-speaking Chinese HL (CHL) students participated in this study. They completed a language background survey…

In order to distinguish between language-related ideologies, Ruiz (1984) proposed three language orientations, namely 'language-as-problem', 'language-as-right' and 'language-as-resource'. Although this typology has been applied to various countries and regions around the globe, relevant research in China, a multi-ethnolinguistic country, remains…

This book offers an evidence-based guide to EAL for everyone who works with multilingual learners. It provides a concise, helpful introduction to the latest research underpinning three key areas of EAL practice: (1) How children acquire additional languages? (2) How language works across the curriculum? and (3) How you can establish outstanding…