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…

Miscommunications appear to offer powerful L2 learning opportunities. In particular, they often arouse emotions that facilitate event recall, and may motivate learners by providing implicit evidence of the communicative importance and personal relevance of underlying language features. This article reports on a pedagogical approach to utilizing…

This article takes the theme of metadiscourse across genres as a point of departure. To illustrate variation in the use of metadiscourse, reflexive uses of second person "you" are examined in different genres and discourse types, all of which represent academic discourse. The material includes university lectures, research articles,…

For learners to communicate efficiently in the L2, they must avoid pragmatic failure. In many cases, teachers' praxis centres on the learner's performance in the L2 or his role as a speaker, which neglects the importance of his role as interpreter of utterances. Assuming that, as hearers, learners also have a responsibility to avoid…

One of the domains most commonly affected by autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is communication (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Language deficits in children with ASD can be as severe as to warrant a label as nonverbal, or characterized by difficulties with the functions of communication. Additionally, deficits in language for children…

This paper explores the implementation of formative assessment through the "autism lens" in order to analyse why the process can be exclusionary for some learners on the autism spectrum. The central thesis of the paper is that, where teachers have no understanding of the autism learning style, they are likely to revert to a normative,…

Today there is a strong tendency to involve local citizens in community work, and to mobilize social forces in poor urban districts. We will focus on one specific method used to educate and help immigrant parents raise and foster their children. This method is described as part of a wider ambition to integrate and involve immigrants in Swedish…

Providing effective interventions for individuals with severe intellectual disabilities (ID) continues to challenge educators, speech-language pathologists, and other allied health professionals. This article reviews recommended intervention practices that have emerged over the past 30 years and illustrates their use through an evidenced-based…

The manuscript examines the relationship between language, identity, and classroom learning. Through an exploration of a series of research studies conducted over the course of 6 years, this manuscript examines how the idea of "Good Teaching" fails to account for the language-identity learning dilemma. In stage one of the research, a series of…

There are now significant numbers of children who speak a language other than English when they enter the formal school system in Australia. Many of these children come from a language background that is entirely different from the school language. Many Indigenous children, however, come from creole-speaking backgrounds where their home language…

We reviewed communication intervention studies involving people with Rett syndrome. Systematic searches of five electronic databases, selected journals, and reference lists identified nine studies meeting the inclusion criteria. These studies were evaluated in terms of: (a) participant characteristics, (b) target skills, (c) procedures, (d) main…

This pilot research project examined the use of sign language as a communication bridge for non-Deaf children between the ages of 0-6 years who had been diagnosed with, or whose communication difficulties suggested, the presence of such disorders as Autism, Down Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), and/or learning disabilities.…

This study explored the perceptions of 304 teacher education students regarding how effectively and meaningfully their instructors use the "Microsoft PowerPoint" presentation software program in their teaching and compared graduate and undergraduate students' perceptions to determine the extent to which graduate and undergraduate teacher educators…

This mixed-methods study probed the effectiveness of three kinds of objects (video, theory, metaphor) as common reference points for conversations between online learners (student teachers). Individuals' degree of detail-focus was examined as a potentially interacting covariate and the outcome measure was learners' level of tacit knowledge related…

Background: Student feedback is a valuable method to evaluate the quality of education. Using a WEB-based questionnaire, the objective of this study was to evaluate the factors that may affect the ratings given by the students and the impact of those ratings on the instructor's teaching performance. Methods: The questionnaire was organized into…