It is commonly agreed that learner target language output and spoken interaction are essential to communicative language learning. This video-based classroom observation study of five lower secondary schools in Norway investigated how second language (L2) English and third language (L3) French teachers responded to their students when they spoke…

The aim of this article is to illustrate the potential of 'atmosphere' in order to consider more inventive ways of developing the language of young Norwegian ethnic minority children. The article draws on ethnographic data that emerged from doctoral studies. The analysis of the data draws on aspects of Arendt's philosophical work and Bakhtin's…

Connecting informal and formal language teaching and learning has gained prominence as a way to understand language development among teenagers, but questions remain regarding its application in L2 contexts. This study investigates the significance of such connections in two L2 English classes taught by the same teacher, where students were…

Despite huge investments in interventions designed to support oral language skills in early childhood and beyond, many of the interventions fail to identify impacts on children's language learning. Programmes may have limited impact because they do not sufficiently succeed in supporting teachers' instructional talk, and thus, more efficiently…

Recent trends in language education have promoted the use of students' linguistic repertoires in the classroom. However, research is lacking into how languages are actually used in target language instruction. This study contributes new knowledge from lower secondary classrooms in Norway, combining a large data set of video observed English…

This study focuses on the quality of teacher-student interactions and feedback in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL). Data consisted of 65 video-recorded lessons from 13 classrooms in two lower-secondary schools, and were coded with Classroom Assessment Scoring System--Secondary. Four cases were selected and analysed for feedback…

Field placement allows pre-service teachers (PSTs) to gain experience teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students. However, little is known about how PSTs engage with multilingualism during field placement. This article investigates how PSTs capitalise on their own as well as their students' linguistic repertoires during field…

The work presented here is a qualitative study of socio-cultural approaches to literary texts in a selection of upper secondary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms in Norway. The article explores opportunities and challenges related to the fostering of competent "intercultural readers" in foreign language (FL) educational…

Translanguaging has gained prominence as a way to understand multilingual practices and draw on these in additional language teaching, but questions remain regarding its application in various educational contexts. This study investigates the significance of translanguaging across instructional settings by comparing discourses of markedness in…

Learners' language background is one of the factors which may influence the amount and functions of own-language use in English instruction. This article reports a study in which a group of almost 400 Polish and Norwegian secondary school learners of English were asked how their own languages are used in the classroom, how they use them when they…

This article presents a study of EssayCritic, a computer-based writing aid for English as a foreign language (EFL) that provides feedback on the content of English essays. We compared two feedback conditions: automated feedback from EssayCritic (target class) and feedback from collaborating peers (comparison class). We used a mixed methods…

Little research has explored how preschools can support children's second-language (L2) vocabulary development. This study keenly followed the progress of twenty-six Turkish immigrant children growing up in Norway from preschool (age five) to fifth grade (age ten). Four different measures of preschool talk exposure (amount and diversity of…

This paper extends work on "intentionality", from philosophy, psychology and education to an exploration of learners' meaning-making in L2 classroom task-engagement. The paper draws on both phenomenological and folk-psychological perspectives on intentionality, and employs John R. Searle's intrinsic (mental) and derived (observable)…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…