This article focuses on the ever-increasing stress on multilingual education (MLE) in policy documents, especially its pairing with mother tongues in education (MTE). This focus brings into relief the relationship between MTE, the preservation of linguistic diversity and social democracy. We argue that the outcome of this relationship crucially…

This article seeks to understand the challenges of literacy acquisition under the Thematic Curriculum reform in Uganda, which introduced Mother Tongue instruction in lower primary. We compare teachers' perspectives from two central districts using Luganda and two peripheral districts using Ateso, drawing on a multi-layered approach to understand…

Indigenous communities, linguists, teachers, and language activists have been developing methods to revitalise endangered languages over several decades. Not only are these methods diverse, they are usually implemented in various ways according to local needs and aspirations. Language revitalisation methods focus on proficiency, but there is also…

Studies on Brunei Malay have made inconsistent findings: while some have asserted that this variety is thriving and is in no way endangered, others have found that its use is now waning. As the dynamics of family speech can inform what is happening linguistically at the community level, this study seeks to investigate the family language policies…

This article reports a part of a larger study which examines the sociolinguistic dynamics within the Hausa community in Saudi Arabia. It focuses on how second-generation members of the Hausa Saudi community perceive their ethnic identity and investigates the relationship between their proficiency in the Hausa heritage language and their sense of…

Typically, families from ethnic minority backgrounds and socioeconomic disadvantage are underrepresented in research. Using secondary data from a survey of the language practices of multilingual families during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we sought to ascertain whether the unexpectedly large proportion of Bradford-based respondents…

This paper reconsiders long-standing debates in Canada about the relationship between language, race, and culture. Federal policies focused on official bilingualism (1969) and multiculturalism (1971) animated local movements of parents, students, and other community members demanding greater linguistic and racial inclusion in schools. This paper…

The purpose of the current research is to investigate the primary teachers' epistemological and pedagogical beliefs related to how to improve students' L1 (mother tongue) writing skills. Furthermore, the participating teachers' attributions regarding their students writing achievement levels were examined. A basic qualitative research design was…

Emotional vocabulary is an important element in daily conversations, and knowledge and teaching of this vocabulary in a second language (L2) should be a primary goal in migration contexts. This study aimed to identify the emotional words used in the written productions of 288 adult immigrants from different countries of origin who were…

This paper is intended mainly to describe the state of affairs of the Portuguese language and its presence within the Portuguese community of Sydney (Australia). The main objective of our research is to observe how language is present in the landscape, observing practices and discourses within the associative life, the community school and the…

In a highly multilingual country like India, challenges and opportunities arise in education and language policy. Although multilingualism is often associated with developmental advantages, Indian primary school children generally show low learning outcomes, specifically on literacy. Here we examine the influence of mother tongue education and…

This book demonstrates the importance of raising multilingual children in the UK, both for the children's own benefit and for the benefit of society as a whole. Against the backdrop of both the rich linguistic diversity already present in the UK and the challenges faced by any languages other than a few major European languages to find any space…

The paper analyses the current situation of the Lithuanian language policy in the 2-3rd decade of the twenty-first century, which, as in some other European countries, has been determined by the confrontation between nationalistic and neoliberal attitudes of the society and the Seimas (Parliament). The reasons for updating language policy are…

Competing ideologies of literacy are well documented in the literature, articulating the gap between everyday literacies in people's lives and formalised literacy norms. Despite this recognition of literacy as 'situated', the gap in perceptions across generations regarding knowledge content and learning forms remains underexplored. This article…

Purpose: Children with hearing loss (HL) experience challenges in sound-related knowledge and techniques for manipulating sounds, which can affect their reading fluency. This study aims to use the unique phonetic, semantic, and visual integration of Chinese characters to access phonological information through visual representation, thereby…