The disruption to the national GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) examinations in England during the summer (June-August) exam period of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been well documented; however, less attention has been paid to the challenges faced by complementary schools in preparing students for GCSEs in heritage…

This exploratory, mixed methods study proposes that pedagogical translation be implemented for biliteracy acquisition in mixed heritage language (HL)-second language (L2) secondary Spanish classrooms. It investigates the mediation of pedagogical translation for reading comprehension in two mixed HL-L2 secondary Spanish classrooms at a suburban…

This article focuses on the role of language ideology in four students' ethnic identity during one stage. I employ Bakhtin's concepts of ideological becoming, and of authoritative and internally persuasive discourse to explore how the student participants are conscious of language and social worlds, including their heritage language and ethnic…

In the US, many immigrant languages have been maintained through the efforts of local communities in the form of community-based Heritage Language (HL) programs. Previous studies have discussed diverging linguistic practices and identities among students and teachers in HL programs. However, there is little research on how materials use affects…

This study shows how learner initiatives are taken during classroom discussions where the teacher seeks to make room for subjectification. Using Conversation Analysis, subjectification can be observed when students take the freedom to express themselves as subjects through learner initiatives. Drawing on data from classroom discussions in language…

This study examines potential assessment bias based on students' primary language status in PISA 2018. Specifically, multilingual (MLs) and nonmultilingual (non-MLs) students in the United States are compared with regard to their response time as well as scored responses across three cognitive domains (reading, mathematics, and science).…

This paper discusses Texas Examinations of Educator Standards Program Languages Other Than English -- Spanish exam (TExES LOTE - Spanish) and its potential bias, particularly against teacher candidates with Spanish as a heritage language (HL) background. In Texas, most teacher candidates, or college students of Spanish preparing for secondary…

The concept of large-scale assessment has long been on the concern of the education system worldwide. PISA, which is one of the large-scale international assessment, has been administered in a number of countries worldwide since 2000. When PISA was first launched, there was an "unconditional acceptance" of this new application worldwide,…

As teachers' experiences are a prerequisite for developing an understanding of the challenges of teaching, their reflections on the potential of using authentic text in L1 grammar teaching deserves closer attention. This paper presents a focus-group study with six Swedish L1 teachers at upper secondary level during an intervention, in which they…

In Sweden, curricula and syllabi for education are politically determined after public consultations. Thus, these educational documents are discursive trade-offs reflecting research, traditions in the educational system, and political ideologies. This study maps the discourses in the syllabus for Sami as L1 mother tongue for preschool class-Year…

L1 grammar teaching worldwide often takes the form of traditional grammar teaching with decontextualized parsing exercises and rules of thumb. Some researchers have proposed enriching such forms of grammar teaching by relating traditional grammatical concepts to underlying metaconcepts from linguistic theory. The merits of such an approach have…

This study analyzes the programs and policies for Spanish heritage language (SHL) students in Iowa high schools. Previous research suggests that SHL students do not enjoy equitable educational experiences in Spanish language classrooms, which are often taught by and designed for traditional second language learners. In US states like Iowa, there…

This study investigates the relationship between identification with the local territory, language attitudes and language proficiency in young immigrants in Catalonia, a region in Spain. The aims of the study are to examine how identification with the local territory affects attitudes and proficiency in languages, and whether language attitudes…

Although studies have consistently found negative correlations between second language (L2) anxiety and L2 achievement, the anxiety concept is criticized for the failure to consider confounding variables, particularly first language (L1) achievement, in the relationship between language anxiety and language achievement. Also, past studies tend to…

Background: Second language (L2) reading is a complex process in which two languages constantly interact. L1 reading and L2 proficiency are two well-acknowledged factors contributing to L2 reading comprehension. Other factors, such as strategy use and anxiety, might also predict L2 reading comprehension, but their roles have not been examined in…