The vocabulary content of the French MFL curriculum in England has received criticism (Häcker, M. 2008. Eleven pets and 20 ways to express one's opinion: the vocabulary learners of German acquire at English secondary schools. "The Language Learning Journal" 36, no. 2: 215-26; Tschichold, C. 2012. French vocabulary in Encore…

This paper addresses a number of questions in the emerging area of blended Chinese language learning design. First, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the extant literature? Second, how might insights from the wider blended and blended language learning literature advance the field? Third, how might these literatures be synthesised to…

Low levels of foreign language learning in the United Kingdom have been attributed to a lack of interest and motivation which, it is claimed, is partly fostered by the media. The present study examines 90 UK newspaper articles that contributed to the public debate on the language learning crisis in the UK between February 2010 and February 2012.…

Data collection methods constitute a major area of concern in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) research, since there is no easy way to collect the type of data that is relatively 'naturalistic' while at the same time allowing for researcher control. Further, current ILP research also suffers from the shortage of studies making use of self-report…

The notion that language is not simply a politically neutral medium of communication, but a social practice that determines power relations and shapes subjectivity has become widely accepted in critical language and literacy studies. Within any socio-linguistic community, certain ways of using language are considered "proper,"…