The sixth edition of this bestselling textbook has been substantially revised and updated to provide a comprehensive introduction to bilingualism and bilingual education in the 21st century. Written in a compact and clear style, the book covers all the crucial issues in bilingualism at individual, group and societal levels. Updates to the new…

South Africa is a country characterised by great linguistic diversity. Large indigenous languages, such as isiZulu and isiXhosa, are spoken by many millions of people, as well as the languages with European roots, such as Afrikaans and English, which are spoken by several millions and used by many more in daily life. This situation provides a…

Since the 1960s, bilingualism has become a defining aspect of Canadian identity. And yet, fifty years after the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism was formed and with over forty years of federal government funding and supports for second-language education, relatively few English Canadians speak or choose to speak French. What…

With contributions from leading scholars all around the world, this volume underlines the ever-pressing need for new language in education policies to include all learners' voices in the multilingual classroom and to empower teachers to develop responsive and transformative pedagogies. Using testimonies, narratives and examples from different…

This book evaluates the origins of processes of change in language teaching in China, and the factors influencing their success. Examining diverse experiences and drawing on the perspectives of academics from the top institutions in the country, the authors analyse the complex interplay between global and local influences on language policies.…

This volume brings together research carried out in a variety of geographic and linguistic contexts including Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe and the United States and explores efforts to incorporate linguistic diversity into education and to "harness" this diversity for learners' benefit. It challenges the largely…

Content and Language Integrated Learning has received a strong tailwind in European educational and language policies. It is on the verge of becoming a mainstream phenomenon. However, an overly speedy implementation of "CLIL for all" might bear a number of risks for all groups of stakeholders. The purpose of this book is to link the…

The fifth edition of this bestselling book provides a comprehensive introduction to bilingualism and bilingual education. In a compact and clear style, its 19 chapters cover all the crucial issues in bilingualism at individual, group and national levels. These include: (1) defining who is bilingual and multilingual; (2) testing language abilities…

The theme of this book cuts across disciplines. Contributors to this volume are specialized in education and especially classroom research as well as in linguistics, most being transdisciplinary themselves. Around 65 sub-Saharan languages figure in this volume as research objects: as means of instruction, in connection with teacher training,…

This collection of papers examines how sign languages are distributed around the world; what occurs when they come in contact with spoken and written languages, and how signers use them in a variety of situations. Each chapter introduces the key issues in a particular area of inquiry and provides a comprehensive review of the literature. The seven…

This book surveys situations in which language contact arises and focuses on what happens to the languages themselves: sometimes nothing, sometimes the incorporation of new words, sometimes the spread of new sounds and sentence structures across many languages and wide swathes of territory. It outlines the origins and results of contact-induced…

This study attempts to do the following things: (1) to identify values and assumptions as they influence research on bilingual education; (2) to identify and delineate the major theories employed in explaining and predicting phenomena in bilingual education; and (3) to explore alternative explanations of identical phenomena, and to show that…

An overview of the economic policy, political structure, and four official languages of Switzerland is presented. The following topics are discussed: (1) economic expansion without natural resources, (2) linguistic diversity, (3) Swiss-German, and (4) politics and governmental organization. (PMP)

This book examines the ways in which people belonging to different language and cultural communities live together in the same political community, and how political and structural tensions arise to divide them along language lines. It analyzes the historical background and recent controversy over language in the United States, then compares the…

The fifteen articles in this volume are generally concerned with the role of vernacular language in bilingual education on an international scale. They examine specific nations and how bilingualism affects their social milieu. The following articles are included: (1) "Bilingualism and the Vernacular," by Shana Poplack; (2) "The…