Multilingualism presents both a challenge and an opportunity for Natural Language Processing, with code-switching representing a particularly interesting problem for computational models trained on monolingual datasets. In this paper, we explore how code-switched data affects the task of Machine Translation, a task which only recently has started…

This study elicited and analyzed all the Chinese and English interrogatives from the Singapore Early Child Mandarin Corpus (132 children aged 2;6, 3;6, 4;6, and 5;6) to examine the effects and predictors of early bilingual development in Singapore preschoolers. The results indicated that: (1) there was significant age (but not gender) effect in…

Conceptualizing how EMI teachers use language in multilingual university settings remains a challenge. While previous studies have explored the language challenges faced by EMI science teachers, few have operationalized 'classroom routines' for understanding classroom language use. This feasibility study applies Freeman et al.'s (2015)…

This paper explores the adoption of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach in primary classrooms, emphasizing that language acquisition is best achieved through meaningful communication rather than rote memorization. Drawing on Krashen's Input Hypothesis and Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory, the study highlights the importance of…

A major rationale for study abroad (SA) from the perspective of second language acquisition is the presumed opportunity available to sojourners for naturalistic second language (L2) "immersion". However, such opportunities are affected by variations in the linguistic, institutional and social affordances of SA, in different settings.…

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of multilingual education, highlighting key issues, methodologies, and future directions in this area. Based on the theoretical foundations of Vygotsky and Krashen, as well as practical approaches such as project-based learning and task-based language learning, the study highlights the importance of…

This study explored the patterns and predictors of code-switching (CS) in Singapore preschoolers by analyzing the data elicited from an existing early childhood corpus. Altogether 943 cases of CS produced by 111 children aged 2;6, 3;6, 4;6, 5;6, respectively, were analyzed. The results indicated that: (1) 'insertion', 'intersentential', and…

Early trilingual development is an excellent testing ground for input reduction effects on acquisition outcomes. This article reports a study investigating input-outcome relations in a child Leo in Hong Kong, who was addressed to in Mandarin, Cantonese and later also in English by caretakers through 'one caretaker-one language' and 'one day-one…

This article examines factors that promote active multilingualism. For this purpose, the "Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test" was used with 48 children. Their results were linked to a parental questionnaire designed to evaluate the children's linguistic input in their immediate environment. The study shows that, besides a minimum amount of…

Some of the key challenges in teaching intercultural communication (IC) are to engage learners in activities which develop their critical intercultural awareness and to prepare them for communication in superdiverse (Vertovec, 2007) contexts. This paper discusses linguistic landscapes (LL) as an innovative method for teaching intercultural…

This is a longitudinal and naturalistic study of the bilingual acquisition of English and Turkish languages simultaneously by a 28-month old Turkish infant. The emphasis is on empirical findings collected from a two-year period of observations beginning from the subject's birth and lasting until his 28-month old linguistic status. The study is…

This article reports on a survey with 170 school-age children growing up with two or more languages in the Canadian province of Ontario where English is the majority language, French is a minority language, and numerous other minority languages may be spoken by immigrant or Indigenous residents. Within this context the study focuses on minority…

Indigenous children growing up in the remote regions of Australia live in multilingual communities which are often undergoing rapid language shift. In these communities, children are exposed to a range of language input, including the traditional language of the area, a local creole and Standard Australian English. The extent to which the…

In two case studies of trilingual development in the home, it was not the home languages that were the strongest but the language of the respective daycare centres. This paper investigates, first, how well the trilingual children could separate their daycare language from their home languages. Then it explores the kinds of communicative…

According to the critical period hypothesis, the earlier the acquisition of a second language starts, the better. Owing to the plasticity of the brain, up until a certain age a second language can be acquired successfully according to this view. Early second language learners are commonly said to have an advantage over later ones especially in…