Focusing on language education policies in Bangladesh, this article shows how the policies have distracted people's attention from the harms inflicted on the country's Indigenous communities and their languages. I discuss two factors that have contributed to policy distractions in this context: a strong form of Bangla linguistic nationalism and a…

Singapore is an ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse nation-state that has always practiced deliberate language policy and planning. The bilingual education policy, introduced shortly after the young nation's independence has led to the emergence of English-knowing bilinguals who are proficient in both English and their ethnically…

This paper discusses how the political interplay between English-in-society and English-in-education policy in the Global South(s) facilitates what I term 'English as a subtle technology of policy distraction' in postcolonial spheres that were colonised by languages other than English. 'English as a subtle technology of policy distraction' is…

While language education programs were created with an equity stance in mind--with the goals of increasing access and facilitating academic success for ethnically and linguistically marginalized students--the larger educational context has compromised access for multiply marginalized students. Recognizing a need for more complex understandings of…

In Hong Kong, Chinese and English are considered separate mediums of instruction. English immersion is expected for schools that teach with English as the medium of instruction, and direct instruction in Chinese is often used to teach English in Chinese medium schools. Evidently, a great divide persists in the Hong Kong government curriculum. In…

This paper addresses 'distractions' in the way English language education is discussed and practiced in one of the most debated systems of education in the world today: Finnish primary education. Distractions are considered as 'makers of disturbance' in educational ideologies by the authors. Examining the 2014 National Core Curriculum and…

German, a West Germanic language belonging to the Indo-European family, is one of the languages of culture and education in Romania. It is spoken by one of 18 recognised minorities in Romania. German has been spoken in Romania throughout history and continues to be spoken today because various German-speaking groups settled in what is now Romania…

Thomas Babington Macaulay's 1835 minute on Indian education is widely held to be representative of the views which underpinned the English East India Company's replacement of Persian with English as the official language of administration in India in 1837, and the promotion of English and Indian vernacular languages as part of colonial educational…

Language education policy in Arizona has been on a rollercoaster over the last five years. Between 2019 and 2024, the state shifted from strict English-only enforcement to loosening restrictions and encouraging dual language approaches, then back to strict English-only enforcement. In this forum piece, we use approaches from critical discourse…

Analogies of the biotic modality within the technical sphere center on notions of vitality, differentiation of function, organization, adaptation and development. On the norm side, these organic analogies allow us to envision technical norms for the development of applied linguistic artefacts, which underlie the coming to fruition and maturation…

A national language policy reflects how a state looks at the languages used by its people. It assigns certain roles to languages, and addresses the issues of language education and language of education. Pakistan, a multilingual country, has yet no language policy at national level. This absence of policy has caused many issues, including the…

Instructed foreign language knowledge -- that is, language skills acquired exclusively in the classroom without the benefit of any significant immersion experience -- remains a vastly neglected area of studies on language learning in general and language attrition in particular. There is also little consideration of foreign language attrition and…

Dr Mahmoud M. S. Abdallah's article, "The New Territory of Educational Research in TESOL/TEFL: What Novice Researchers Should Know", provides a comprehensive guide for novice researchers in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). It emphasises the importance of research…

This paper proposes a framework for multilingual language-in-education policy implementation, offered as a critically constructive response to India's recent "National Education Policy 2020" (GOI, 2020). Rooted in India's existing educational language policy, our linguistically inclusive 'Languages for Learning' (LFL) framework is, we…

Research on economic activity in Africa consistently ignores the importance of individuals' linguistic repertoires. We argue that an important contributing factor to the persistence of this lacuna is the lack of visibility of language in the social and economic data that is collected by governments through social surveys. We examine the specific…