Framed by decolonial theory, this paper explores how language and literacy ideologies, including Anglonormativity, or the expectation that children should be proficient in a standardised version of English and are deficient if not, shape language and literacy practices in South African classrooms. While not legitimised, the use of fluid language…

Language assessment is a central aspect not only of language education in the general population, but also amongst heterogeneous, low-incidence populations. One such population are immigrant deaf and hard-of-hearing learners (IDML) who are bimodal-multilingual and whose languages development often includes the spoken, written, and/or signed…

This article reports findings from a three-year qualitative study that explored the nature of translingual writing practices of the emergent multilingual youth who are ethnic Korean migrant children from Central Asia and Russia to South Korea. While settling into a new society, these emergent multilingual children tend to navigate and negotiate…

I explore the ways in which language ideologies are transformed when they are transplanted to diasporic settings as a result of migration. I examine the labelling of Cypriot Greek features as "slang" by young British-born speakers of Greek Cypriot heritage. Drawing on the analysis of data collected in a Greek complementary school in…

As an intimidating school subject for students globally, writing requires a high level of motivation, especially for second language (L2) learners. Despite abundant research on motivation in both first language (L1) writing and L2 learning, L2 writing motivation warrants more attention. To bridge the gap, the study intends to present an overall…

Technology-mediated communication has become ubiquitous and digital multimodal learning has been increasingly integrated into second language education. Drawing on the concepts of transmediation and interpretant in social semiotic theories, this study explores the potential of digital storytelling (DST) in promoting EFL learners' willingness to…

This article analyses how speakers of an autochthonous heritage language (AHL) make use of digital media, through the example of Low German, a regional language used by a decreasing number of speakers mainly in northern Germany. The focus of the analysis is on Web 2.0 and its interactive potential for individual speakers. The study therefore…

Linguistics has long recognised that figurative language in the form of metaphorical expressions structures and communicates attitudes towards the ideas and concepts being expressed and that multilingual students also employ linguistic figures frequently in their writing. In this study, multilingual students use figurative language to both…

The paper investigates the concept of willingness to communicate (WTC) in the context of tertiary education in Serbia with a twofold aim: (a) to assess the level of students' WTC, both generally and in relation to each of the four language skills, both inside the classroom and outside of it; (b) to explore the extent to which orientation towards…

Developing academic literacy skills in Classical Arabic (L1), Hebrew (L2) and English (FL) among 10th-grade Bedouin students in Southern Israel is of central importance, in light of the country's policies regarding trilingual education for this sector. This paper presents the findings of research which examined the impact of a teaching model where…

The paper problematises student writing as social practice from the perspective of lecturers' discursive practices. The paper uses data from a major study at a higher learning institution in Tanzania to explore lecturers' discursive practices and familiarity with the university orders of discourse including English medium of instruction, in…

In the Singlish-"Good" English debate, the use of Singlish (SCE) is viewed as an obstacle to the development of students' literacy skills in standard English (SSE) and so the practice of classroom codeswitching between the two varieties is strongly discouraged. Yet the presence of the vernacular in the classroom continues to be robust.…

When Botswana gained independence from the British in 1966, a political decision was taken to designate English as an official language and Setswana, one of the indigenous languages, as a national language. This move disregarded the multilingual nature of Botswana society. Furthermore, although not explicitly stated, the use of other languages…

Students enter pre-service teacher education programmes with certain preconceptions about what the world is like, what classrooms are like and how students acquire literacy. In our increasingly multicultural society, teachers in pre-service teacher education courses are often not representative of the wider population. The present paper reports on…

This paper reports on a study conducted with children belonging to a rarely studied minority group, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel, an extremely religious group that endorses patterns of voluntary segregation. The research population also demonstrates linguistic segregation, as they use only Yiddish for daily communication with…