Design and content of classroom activities are crucial to foreign/second (L2) language learners' motivation, be they children or adults. Lifeworld relevance and learner autonomy are two important aspects in building motivational L2 curricula for adults (e.g.), but such considerations rarely filter through to primary school learners due to…

What images of the world do we find in language textbooks? What countries and continents are favoured, what key problems of the world are mentioned and taken up, what segments of the world's populations are represented and how, what role is given to the understanding of world history, colonialism and imperialism, what role is given to the…

As humans, we all experience the fundamental need to belong. Often, this sense of belonging is inherited and nurtured by our families and their histories, the languages we speak and the cultures we adhere to; and it is in our experiences and engagement with these aspects of ourselves that our identities are formed, contested, negotiated and…

This article presents a model of intercultural learning that may be used in the planning and implementation of citizenship education in foreign/second/world language teaching. The Cycle model of intercultural learning aims at the development of global citizenship and comprises four phases: noticing, comparing, reflecting and interaction. Among the…

Service Learning, a pedagogy combining formal learning with community service, has recently developed into Intercultural Service Learning (ISL). Intercultural Citizenship Education (ICE) combines foreign-language education and education for (intercultural) citizenship. They have different origins and applications but recent work in ISL is linked…

As a result of increasing internationalisation, the University of Copenhagen established the Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use (CIP) in 2008 as a research, competence development and resource centre. Part of CIP's remit is to provide language training (mainly in Danish and English) for students and staff at the University.…

Recently, in the wake of the Bologna Declaration and similar international initiatives, there has been a rapid increase in the number of university courses and programmes taught through the medium of English. Surveys have consistently shown the Nordic countries to be at the forefront of this trend towards English-medium instruction (EMI). In this…

This article describes an online intercultural citizenship project concerning the environment in the primary English-language classroom carried out in 2013/2014 between Argentina and Denmark. It is part of a network of projects coordinated by Michael Byram that involves teachers and researchers in Europe, the US and East Asia. The project is…

For decades foreign and second language teachers have taken advantage of the technology development and ensuing possibilities to use e-learning facilities for language training. Since the 1980s, the use of computer assisted language learning (CALL), Internet, web 2.0, and various kinds of e-learning technology has been developed and researched…

Formulations of linguistic rights in European official documents reveal important ideological characteristics of the thinking about language in European societies. These ideologies have important consequences for the language policies and education policies pursued by authorities and for the norms of language use promoted by education systems and…

This article describes how students in the second language classroom claim incipient speakership and establish recipiency with a co-participant before the turn is properly initiated. The resources used by the incipient speaker include in-breaths and body movements. The article shows that when the teacher's turn is designed as not to pre-establish…

Teachers and schools in Denmark are presently trapped in a dilemma between political discourse concerning monolingual and monocultural education in the national curriculum and their professional knowledge about children and learning processes. Out of 690,000 students in primary and lower secondary schools in Denmark, approximately 10% are…

Danish as a second language textbooks published over the last 15 years have presented the Danish cultural identity as a homogenous and purely national phenomenon. Research into teaching theory, on the other hand, has been more broad-minded, and is based on interactivity. The aim of this paper is to explain this divergence. (Contains 2 notes.)

This report describes a seminar at Roskilde University Center (Denmark) on project work in foreign languages, which brought together language teachers and theorists from different schools, including universities, business schools, technical schools, merchants schools, and high schools, to discuss their experiences with project work in foreign…

According to an agreement between the parties of the labour market and the Ministry of Labour, the immigration of foreign workers into Denmark takes place on a quota basis and conforms to a series of regulations, including a rule that the foreign worker, prior to departing from his country, must have made contract arrangements for his job. This…