This article discusses the rationale for using language diaries as a method to evaluate language use and language choice in multilingual contexts, as well as the benefits and limitations of this approach vis-à-vis other research methods. This is illustrated using examples from two contexts: Flemish Sign Language/Dutch bilinguals in Flanders and…

In multi-ethnic contexts, it is not uncommon to find that dementia carers or their clients are using, as the medium for communication in care, a language in which they are not comfortable and/or are not fluent. In extreme cases, there could be no shared linguistic code at all. This article asks how feasible it is to provide adequate care with…

The paper discusses how learner engagement in language learning settings has been conceived of and investigated in the past decade. Whilst a cognitive focus used to predominate in research on language learners' engagement, the importance of affective (and social) factors is increasingly recognised. The paper interrogates 'engagement' in the…

This paper outlines the context in which Language Awareness (LA) research is currently situated and where it might be going. The starting point is Eric Hawkins's vision (40 years ago) of LA as a bridge between school subjects and, in wider society, between people of different backgrounds and languages. Although considerable progress has been made…

This paper looks at multicompetence aspects of multilingual learning and offers a new conceptual framework for the discussion of multicompetence. The paper takes Cook's multicompetence theory as the point of departure and proposes a reconceptualisation thereof which is broader in scope and keyed to a dynamic systems and complexity theory…

Given the cross-cultural differences underlying interactional routines such as "How are you?" or "How was your weekend?", managing such routine inquiries can be problematic for second language learners. Based on data from an adult ESL (English as a second language) class, this conversation analytic study shows how learners develop their competence…

As the speakership of English worldwide continues to grow, English language teachers are required to devise ways to prepare their learners for communicating successfully across cultures. As pragmatics is particularly tied up with culture, the ways in which individuals from different cultures will orient to pragmatic phenomena in their interaction…

The paper investigates how a student on a master's-level teacher education course for English language teachers goes about constructing her grammar knowledge. The learner is a novice teacher with English as a foreign language. Learner diary, interview, and group interaction data were analysed thematically, revealing that she made relatively few,…

This article argues that Irish Travellers' ideologies of languageness and their definition of Cant are closely linked to their perceptions of social reality. Cant is a communicative code which Travellers use beside English in Traveller-specific situations. Based on the analysis of focus groups, I take a folk-linguistic and anthropological approach…

By drawing upon the dialogic theory of Bakhtin, I consider how register variation is represented in the children's books by the popular Greek writer Dr. Eugene Trivizas, with the aim to explore whether, and in what terms, it could be exploited for the raising of (critical) language awareness. Most sociolinguistic studies which have used literature…

This paper considers the issue raised in 2008 by Gillian Brown in her article "Selective listening" regarding whether nouns are "privileged" in memory over verbs during listening tasks, and whether attention to nouns, at least in the early stages of L2 learning, is a desirable strategy to be taught to learners, as Brown…

As part of the attempts to revitalise Corsican, a regional language of France, and to reverse the language shift to French, language activists and academics have sought to apply the model of a polynomic language to what is considered as one language, but what is, in fact, a number of different Corsicans, each with varying levels of mutual…

This paper considers the case of Intercultural Understanding (IU) as a component part of foreign language learning and teaching in the upper stage of primary schools (roughly ages 7-11 years) in the UK. It is set within a specific context of curriculum innovation, namely recent policy changes which have introduced IU as a key part of primary…

The following contribution is a meta-analysis of the language awareness discipline from a practical application point of view. It is based on a keynote speech at the "10th International Conference of the Association for Language Awareness," and deals with the implications of business requirements for language use in communication processes. The…

We examined the relationship between the quality of second language (L2) learners' language awareness (as shown through dialogue journal entries) and the quality of their L2 pronunciation (as assessed through listener-based ratings of accentedness, comprehensibility, and fluency). The participants were 10 students enrolled in a 13-week…