Multilingualism is a widespread phenomenon in modern societies. A considerable number of people speak more than two languages in their everyday life due to historical, social, or economic reasons (Cenoz & Genesee, 1998). They may live in a multilingual community as a result of colonialism and immigration, or they might be in constant contact…

This paper aims to highlight the importance of teaching sociolinguistic competence to ESL learners in Malaysian schools. Sociolinguistic competence is the knowledge of socio cultural rules of language and of discourse. This type of competence requires an understanding of the socio context in which language is used. It is proposed that carefully…

Six stages of a total communication intervention strategy to improve question comprehension skills in a profoundly hearing impaired subject (age 12) are described: (1) enhancing emergent skills; (2) manipulating wh-question forms; (3) increasing flexibility in wh-question responses; (4) developing questions in conversational context; (5) prompting…

This article discusses some of the challenges that researchers working in the fields of bilingualism and second-language acquisition (SLA) and in the field of language testing face in developing comparable and culturally and cognitively appropriate data collection and language assessment tools for bilingual children from rural minority-language…

An experimental course in English for non-English speaking post graduate research students is described here. The course was intended to enable the students to use English efficiently in exchanges related to their profession. The selection process, teaching methods, and the "exit test" are described and a discussion of the adequate and inadequate…

For several years in Switzerland it had been clear that adolescents with previous learning difficulties in their own country experienced even greater academic problems in Switzerland where they were expected to attend school with native speakers of French. Therefore, an experimental class was organized of Spanish and Italian-speaking children who…