Health messages are central to the field of public health in influencing behavioral change, and previous research does not offer a univocal answer on the most effective ordering of health outcomes and (un)healthy behaviors within health communication. An archival study revealed that online mass-media communicators tend to mention behaviors first.…

There is now extensive theoretical and empirical literature on the place of the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) in the foreign language (FL) classroom. Although this body of work includes related teacher beliefs and practices, less attention has been paid to the factors that may influence these practices across different national…

This article investigates the ways in which children from immigrant backgrounds view the place of "other" languages in primary schools in France and England. This article draws on findings from a cross-national ethnographic study, which investigated the experiences of 10- and 11-year-old children of immigrants in two primary schools, one…

This article draws on interactional pragmatics and a cross-cultural approach (UK, France, Spain) to investigate the negotiation of individual and group identities in two different speech events, parliamentary debates and editorial meetings. The cross-cultural examination of the use of linguistic resources for signalling "social role,…

Many recent studies on computer-mediated communication (CMC) have addressed the question of orality and literacy. This article examines a relatively recent subgenre of CMC, that of written online sports commentary, that provides us with written CMC that is clearly based on firmly established oral genres, those of radio and television sports…

Attitudes to science scales developed in England have been used in a rural region of South Africa with children aged 10 and 11 years in a two-stage data collection investigation. Cultural constraints on the use of "foreign" scales are explored. Factor analyses reveal differences between the South African and English children. A South…

This study investigated how repetition is used in conversation among native speakers of British English, native speakers of Japanese, and Japanese speakers of English. Five interactional functions of repetition (interruption-orientated, solidarity, silence-avoidance, hesitation, and reformulation) were identified, as well as the cultural factors…

In the scientific literature, the debate around the school and class effect is polarized, because the variance between schools and classes is explained either by school and class process or by group composition. The first aim of this article is to shed light on this debate and move beyond it by reviewing qualitative and quantitative studies…

Describes junior high school students' understandings of some common non-technical words used in science classes and compares results for students in Botswana and England. Finds that considerable concerns remain about the way in which teachers use words in science. Concludes that the greatest problems occur with second-language students in…