Many scholars have highlighted the great variability of second language acquisition outcomes and, thus, the inconsistencies and inconclusiveness in the study abroad literature. These have called for longitudinal, case-based research that focuses on the students' processes (rather than outcomes) and that showcases the heterogeneity of…

The role of students' first language(s) in foreign language classrooms has been hotly debated in the last decades. Although this line of research has advanced our understanding of language choice in the L2 classroom, it has mostly dealt with adolescent and adult learners. From a contextual perspective, then, more micro-analytic research that…

Students and teachers from different language backgrounds are at risk of becoming victims of conflicting trends and conventions when writing in English. This study compares conventions of English academic writing at several European universities with what is taught in English-speaking countries. Data were collected with questionnaires and by…

This article investigates encounters between the two overall language resources -- standard vs. non-standard and regional varieties -- in two linguistic minority communities in Denmark. Concentrating on Turkish and Farsi mother tongue classes, the study departs from two interviews with the parents of mother tongue students. Additional ethnographic…

Based on Bourdieu's theory of practice, this article explores pedagogical ideals and educational policies in teachers' everyday practice in a postcolonial bilingual university setting in Greenland. Greenlandic and Danish teachers' teaching ideals were explored during a one-year pedagogy qualifying course for assistant professors organised by the…

This article examines how, in a multilingual perspective, language competence is experienced, talked about and practiced by language users themselves. By viewing children as active co-creators of the spaces in which language is used, this article contributes to a research tradition in which focus is shifted from viewing the individual's language…

In this paper we report on a longitudinal study of the linguistic development among Turkish-speaking children in Denmark. A series of data were collected from a group of children attending a public school in Køge during the period 1989-1998 and from the same group--now in their 20s--in 2006-2007. The data set has been analyzed from a number of…

This study starts from the premise that academic mobility contributes to the development of students' plurilingual identities and that study abroad contexts aiming at becoming global spaces are particularly interesting sites to explore the individuals' discursive work to (re-)construct their plurilingual identities by reconciling their language…

This article explores the interactional processes of a binational stepfamily in Denmark. Following Bourdieu (1977), it is argued that in stepfamily interaction, negotiations of legitimacy precede, overlap and become intertwined with negotiations of control and connection. In previous studies conducted in interactional linguistics and linguistic…

This paper explores the PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] achievement of twenty countries in light of some of their demographic differences. SES [student socioeconomic status], nuclear family, gender, home language, and native status were predictive of achievement for every country. Demographics accounted for as little as 8…

Formulations of linguistic rights in European official documents reveal important ideological characteristics of the thinking about language in European societies. These ideologies have important consequences for the language policies and education policies pursued by authorities and for the norms of language use promoted by education systems and…

In the multinational corporation (MNC) context the crossing of linguistic boundaries and the fast-paced change of linguistic ecologies due to market trends and new business activities is the rule rather than the exception. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to discuss language policy and language practice in one consortium of three…