This language classroom article demonstrates how L2 (second language) feature films, through the incorporation of tasks that facilitate comprehension, interpretation, and cultural comparison, can be used at a range of levels to teach students about immigration and other global challenges. While the scaffolding strategies described in the article…

Migration, among the most important sociocultural phenomena of contemporary global societies, is complex, dynamic, and multifaceted. At the heart of migration is language, the indispensable agent of migration. Hence, in this article, a new sub-discipline of linguistics is presented, and that is 'migration linguistics'. It is the interdisciplinary…

Politics and education have always been closely entwined, but recent interactions with colleagues in the author's field about the border crisis have convinced her that these individuals are either in complete accord with the idea of large numbers of immigrants crossing the U.S. border illegally or they are completely ignorant of the situation and…

This discussion describes a collaboration between a high school for recently arrived immigrant and refugee youth and a local college. Across 6 weeks, college tutors read a wordless graphic novel, "The Arrival" (Tan, 2007), with newcomer students to support oral English language development, to develop interpretations, and to invite…

Suresh Canagarajah is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor and Director of the Migration Studies Project, Departments of Applied Linguistics and English, Pennsylvania State University, USA. Having a BA with a major in English from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, Professor…

French immersion (FI) programs in Canada have historically served predominantly Canadian-born, English-speaking students and families in their endeavour to learn both of the country's official languages, French and English. However, FI programs are becoming increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse as a result of increased global…

Memoirs and autobiographical writing on language learning provide perspectives on migration and residence in North America and Europe for the most part, where struggle and loss are some of the recurrent themes (Aneta Pavlenko 2001a; Besemeres 2004; Kinginger 2004a). An unaddressed aspect of foreign language learning remains the 'reverse'…

Second language (L2) learners comprehend more when they are prepared for novel vocabulary that they encounter in a text. Input-based incremental (IBI) vocabulary instruction (Barcroft, 2012) provides L2 instructors and learners with a means of achieving this goal by (a) presenting optimal input to learners at the right time during a…

Since at the turn of the twenty-first century heritage language (HL) research and education was a new field emerging, this research timeline traces the complete history of the field in the US through 2016. It highlights how theories and perspectives have changed, been challenged, and widely accepted. The field's roots are in Spanish since, as the…

Civics education is an important component of what we do in adult ESL classes. Therefore, in the fall of 2016, although most of the adults in my class were not yet citizens, and, therefore, not eligible to vote, I wanted the learners to understand the upcoming election and especially the significance of red and blue states as reflected in the…

Language education has mobilized community-based service-learning's (CBSL) experiential paradigm in the United States and in international settings over the past 20 years, with the goal of enhancing the linguistic and communicative competence of language learners and advancing the intercultural competence that is necessary for global citizens to…

2020 ushered in the convergence of multiple societal, political, environmental, and health crises. Racial reckoning collided with fearmongering on a national scale and punitive policies targeted non-citizens simultaneous to the global health pandemic COVID-19. COVID-19 required the unexpected pivoting from in-person instruction to what was, for…

Scholars acknowledge that Indigenous Latinx immigrants' complex process of adapting to life in the United States, or incorporation, differs from that of their non-Indigenous counterparts. Understanding these differences is especially important as arrivals of Indigenous refugees and asylum seekers from Central America have increased steadily over…

For some people, nothing sounds duller than the word "history." And yet history can be fascinating; it can afford us a chance to see the world through others' eyes; in comparing historical events with the current state of affairs, we can sometimes perceive our realities in a new light. Landmarks in the history of English as a second…

This article explores how drama pedagogy in the foreign language classroom serves as a unique avenue for approaching the global issue of migration in the context of German-speaking Europe. The article focuses on how staging a contemporary play about migration, such as Roland Schimmelpfennig's "Der goldene Drache" (2009), in German for an…