Today, scholars and students face an array of lingualisms: bilingualism, multilingualism, polylingualism, metrolingualism plurilingualism, codeswitching, codemeshing, and translanguaging, among others. Plurilingualism can be understood as the study of individuals' repertoires and agency in several languages, in different contexts, in which the…

Canadian post-secondary classrooms are linguistically diverse. This diversity comes from immigration, more access to higher education for marginalized and minority groups, and international student recruitment. An institute's language prerequisites serve as tools to help admissions decide who is linguistically prepared for study in English.…

The author examines discourses of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and World Englishes (WEs) in the commercials for 2 standardized English tests: the International English Language Testing System for study abroad in English-dominant countries and the Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program for Canadian permanent residency and…

This paper draws on ethnographic research to discuss the textual practices and social relations of language assessment. It examines the tensions that language educators and assessment practitioners encounter while making decisions about immigrant professionals' language competence. It also analyzes the role of other social actors in constituting…

Drawing on qualitative interview and focus group data collected from Internationally Educated Teachers (IETs) in the context of two different research studies conducted in Ireland and Manitoba, Canada, this article critically examines how national/regional linguistic requirements and expectations of a hidden curriculum are experienced as barriers…

This study explores the attitudes and identities of future ESL teachers in a 4-year teacher education program in a regional university in Québec, Canada. We describe the sociopolitical context of learning English in Québec and explain studies describing the position of nonnative-speakers who teach English in various political and geographical…

In this inquiry, I examine the cross educational experiences of ten Arab undergraduate students in two English-language universities in Montreal. Participants were from Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco and have been in Canada for three to seven years. Classic qualitative methodological tools of in-depth interviews, participant observation and…

Children's early spelling attempts (invented spellings) and underlying component skills were evaluated in a sample (N = 115) of 5-year-old children. Letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness were shown to be important predictors of invented spelling performance in this age group. The results also showed associations between invented spelling…

Examines the abilities of 50 children (10 each at ages 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14 years) to produce tag questions. Of particular interest was the determination of whether or not constituents of a correct tag are acquired at different ages. (MP)

Children's observation of the given-new contract was tested with a task requiring children to provide novel, rather than known, information about an event to a listener. Study 1 revealed developmental differences in children's adherence to the contract: 4- and 5-year-olds showed better adherence to the contract than 3-year-olds. In Studies 2 and…

An English reading program for non-English-speaking Canadian immigrant children is based on the premise that a reader's ability to understand a text is based on his capacity to organize written material into linguistically meaningful units. (MB)

Compares data gathered for 5-year-olds in Montreal and Paris, and shows that the differences between the two communities are marginal in terms of the complexity of the acquisition process. Notable differences are observed in performance. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

A study investigated the functional relationship that exists when mental ability and language competence are separately and simultaneously measured with regard to their influence on the effective treatment of verbal information. Data were gathered from 100 men and women, aged 20-60, who were tested for language competence, reading comprehension,…

Studies Inuktitut and English writing proficiencies with elementary students. Finds native language fluency increases at the expense of polysynthetic complexity as students progress through school. Explores the search for linguistic and cultural bridges in Canadian native and minority situations as a more considered approach to vernacular…

Investigates the role of primary linguistic data in the acquisition of linguistic competence. The study examines the knowledge of adverb placement of francophone students learning English as a Second Language (ESL) one year after their exposure to a flood of data on adverb placement in English. Results indicate no change in the subjects'…