This article will focus on inequalities for migrants which are (re)produced by the promise of equality through citizenship and settlement test regimes. I theorize the links between language and borders by drawing on scholarship on security before offering an analysis of language border proliferation. Drawing on other studies and my own work, I…

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…

In this paper, I argue for expanding language socialization research on the academic discourse socialization of speakers of English as an additional language to less-commonly researched settings outside of English-dominant countries. Following an overview of some theoretical and methodological issues involved in conducting such research, I lay out…

Large individual differences in language skills are well documented in monolingual children (e.g., Kidd, Donnelly & Christiansen, 2018). In bilinguals, the broad variation is even more pronounced. Interestingly, some bilingual children might be weak in their Heritage Language (HL, also labeled as Minority Language, Home Language, Community…

Multilingual education and acculturation research share a parallel history of problematic research paradigms that center the majority viewpoint and view minorities through a lens of deficit. This continual pathology of cultural difference has led to the pathologization of minority individuals, and has hampered our efforts to effectively understand…

The objective of this research is to comparatively analyze the performance of two generations of children (as first generation of immigrants) attending primary and secondary education in different geographical areas, evaluated in different decades but with equivalent age brackets. Two samples of 169 immigrant school populations in Portugal, with…

In this paper, we, as three transnational TESOL practitioners (TTP), engage in a collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to examine our professional identity tensions. Theoretically, we follow the premise that the tensions we experience in our professional life can be productive experiences for identity-oriented reflection and, as we work toward…

Bilingualism was not the norm in our family tradition, except for distant ancestors who spoke Gaelic. The only language study by immediate family members was of Latin by my parents. In the first year that Japanese was offered at my high school in the 1970's, I was prompted by the teachers to try this new offering. I acquiesced without giving it…

Willingness to communicate (WTC), a recent affective construct of SLA research, has experienced a paradigm shift regarding its nature. Current WTC research tends to define it as a dynamic and context-bound structure rather being in a linear and static disposition. New conceptualization is based on Complex Dynamic System (CDS) theory. This theory…

Whether or not to teach grammar explicitly is an issue that has long been debated in the field of SLA. There seems to be a growing consensus among many researchers now in support of embedding some element of explicit instruction within a communicative curriculum. The main arguments in support of explicit instruction are threefold: two widely cited…

"Variability" and "fractality," two key concepts in Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST)--the former concerning changes and variations, and the latter concerning recursiveness and self-similarities--may seem contradictory at first glance. This forum piece attempts to elucidate how the two seemingly contradictory properties can…

In the twenty-first-century working professionals need to possess strong Interactional Competence to handle professional communication in intercultural contexts (PCIC). However, the relationship among the three PCIC constituents -- culture, workplace and interaction -- is undertheorized in current research. This leaves PCIC practitioners…

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)…

Recent studies on language and migration have attempted to address the social injustices stemming from global disparities in wealth and opportunities. However, there's a risk of researchers unintentionally reinforcing traditional power dynamics, positioning themselves in power while reducing participants to mere data sources. Focusing on migrants…

Mercer (2018) makes a compelling argument for the urgent need to further research teacher psychology, focussing on language teachers. While there has been considerable research on language learner psychology and with considerable focus on individual differences (IDs), there have been comparatively few studies into language teacher psychology.…