State-issued seals and certificates of biliteracy are increasingly common nationwide. Nevertheless, limited research to date has examined how this state legislation functions as language in education policy and the ideological foundations of these policies. Addressing this gap, the present paper examines state seals as an instance of neoliberal…

Return migration from the United States to Mexico has been increasing in the last decade. Research reports that many returnees, who are English dominant, drop out of school to look for work in call centers and transnational companies (Anderson, 2015). Others pursue higher education in English-based programs such as those for becoming English…

This story explored the educational experience of a 20 year-old man who came to California from Michoacan, Mexico with his parents and siblings when he was 10 years old. Using qualitative research methodology and testimonio, he and his parents were interviewed to hear and document their stories of his academic journey from the early years in…

This study investigated teachers' grading decision making, focusing on their beliefs underlying their grading decision making, their grading practices and assessment types, and factors they considered in grading decision making. Two teachers from two junior high schools applying different curriculum policies in grade reporting in Indonesian…

Using generalizability (G-) theory and rater interviews as both quantitative and qualitative approaches, this study examined the impact of scoring methods (i.e., holistic versus analytic scoring) on the scoring variability and reliability of an EFL institutional writing assessment at a Turkish university. Ten raters were invited to rate 36…

This case study focuses on a 2008 incident where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vans appeared near a K-5 elementary school. It was the first time school personnel experienced the impact of federal immigration agents policing illegality in their school community, and the event set off a chain of decision-making choices as to how…

This article explores dilemmatic aspects of language policies in a preschool group in which three languages (Swedish, Romani and Arabic) are spoken on an everyday basis. The article highlights the interplay between policy decisions on the societal level, the teachers' interpretations of these policies, as well as language practices on the micro…

Alderson, Brunfaut and Harding (2014) recently investigated how diagnosis is practised across a range of professions in order to develop a tentative framework for a theory of diagnosis in second or foreign language (SFL) assessment. In articulating this framework, a set of five broad principles were proposed, encompassing the entire enterprise of…

This case study aimed to explore best practice in applying task-based language teaching (TBLT) via a Web-conferencing tool, Blackboard Collaborate, in a beginners' online Chinese course by evaluating the pedagogical values and limitations of the software and the tasks designed. Chapelle's (2001) criteria for computer-assisted language learning…

There is a growing population of English language learners (ELLs) in elementary schools across the United States, and a current academic achievement gap between ELLs and non-ELLs. Researchers have found that integration of Web 2.0 tools has benefitted ELLs in language learning settings, outside of the general classroom. The research problem…

Program evaluation is a process of carefully collecting information in order to make informed decisions to strengthen specific components of a given program. The type of evaluation an institution decides to undertake depends on the purpose as well as on the information the institution wants to find out about its program. Self-evaluation represents…

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…

Research conducted by English-speaking researchers about other language speaking subjects is essentially cross-cultural and often multilingual, particularly with qualitative research that involves participants communicating in languages other than English. In research using non-English data, scholars have noted that the translation process can be…

Unwillingness to communicate (UWTC) was initially conceptualized as a trait-like predisposition in L1 studies, but later research shifted the focus to willingness to communicate (WTC). In second language acquisition, WTC was introduced as a situational construct where time is highlighted by the immediate context of decision to communicate.…

Foreign language education scholars from the West have agreed for a long time on the importance of including culture in foreign language classroom (Byram & Morgan, 1994; Fantini, 1997; Hall, 2002; Hymes, 1997; Kramsch, 1993; Seelye, 1993) and countries in the East have taken up this work, often without locally produced research. This…