This article delves into the ongoing debate surrounding the role of age in second language acquisition, examining developments over the past three decades and highlighting contentious issues. We argue that the commonly held belief in age's pivotal role is frequently contradicted by empirical evidence. Additionally, we examine the agerelated debate…

Paradis' (2023) keynote article is a timely documentation of the ongoing shift in focus within childhood bilingualism research from investigating the factors that modulate majority or second language (ML/L2) attainment (Chondrogianni & Marinis, 2011) to understanding the sources of variation that lead to minority heritage language (HL)…

Language sample analysis (LSA) has been called the "gold standard" for clinical language assessment with children learning more than one language. The research literature discussing this clinical tool with bilingual children has grown substantially in recent years. This article reviews and synthesizes the literature on LSA in order to…

This article revisits the "jongo" activity 'Pisei na Pedra' (2014) integrated into the "Nossa Casinha" guide (Martins & Sala, 2022) for teaching Portuguese to migrant children. "Jongo" is seen as an Afro-Brazilian form of expression, encompassing chants, drumming, collective dance, and spirituality (Rufino, 2014,…

This paper sets out to peruse the role of various theories or more precisely, hypotheses invoked in second language acquisition (SLA) research by surveying three empirical studies pertaining to the critical period hypothesis in the SLA of phonetics and phonology. In particular, the three studies reviewed are titled in chronological order as (1)…

In this article, we discuss the discursive processes that surround storytelling of traumatic experiences in the case of minor asylum seekers involved in the recent migration flow to Italian ports. We argue that in order to understand not only how traumatic experiences are told but also how they are overcome, it is necessary to focus on the…

In this article, I argue that first language (L1), second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition are fundamentally the same process, based on learning by parsing. Both child and adult learners are sensitive to fine linguistic distinctions, and language development takes place in small steps. While the bulk of the article focuses on…

The article presents a typology of statements that can be made about discourse data. The classification is based on two parameters: level of generality and level of interpretation. Each of these is operationalized into three discrete levels, to yield a nine-cell table containing types of statements going from the presentation of a single case to…

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…

Second language acquisition after the students have learned their first language is a unique process. One major difference between learning a foreign language and one's mother tongue is that second language learning is often facilitated with digital media, and in particular, through interacting with computers. This project is aimed at leveraging…

This article reports from instances of child language brokering among emergent bilingual youths and parents at a New York City after-school community literacy program composed largely of Mexican immigrant families. I argue that youth language brokers negotiated literacies with and for their parents in differing contexts, with different audiences,…

This paper will present the findings of a wide-scale research aimed at studying the phenomenon of Child Language Brokering (henceforth CLB) in Italy. After providing a description of recent immigration patterns and the provision of language services in Italy, and an overview of current research in this field, this study will discuss narrative data…

Intergenerational transmission, the ultimate goal of language revitalization efforts, can only be achieved by (re)establishing the conditions under which an imperiled language can be acquired by the community's children. This paper presents a tutorial survey of several key points relating to language acquisition and maintenance in children,…

One of the most enduring questions in the field of bilingualism is whether bilingual infants and children initially have one language system or two. Research with adults indicates that, while bilinguals do not represent their languages in two fully encapsulated language systems, they are able to functionally differentiate their languages. This…

Neoliberalism, as an ideology that valorizes and institutionalizes market-based freedom and individual entrepreneurship, derives from the logic of highly advanced capitalism, and thus must be understood in relation to the material conditions of our capitalist economy. One such material condition is space. However, the intersection of space and…