This paper focuses on the issue of language of instruction, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, and considers the persistent preference for monolingual learning environments in multilingual societies. The perception that the use of African languages in education interferes with the acquisition of a global language is shown to be incongruous with…

Current second language (L2) listening research has lacked detailed accounts of L2 listeners' difficulties comprehending texts comprising orthographically known lexis. In the current study, 15 first language (L1) Japanese English language learners of three English proficiency levels listened to sentences and a narrative text. A two-task diagnostic…

This article reports two intervention studies testing the effects of plurilingual teaching on grammatical development among primary-school students learning English as a foreign language (FL). In a pre-posttest control-group design, more than 200 9-10-year old majority language German and minority language students received plurilingual FL…

The article seeks to answer four questions: (1) How different are the value worlds in the Estonian- and German-language songbooks used in Estonia 1860-1914? (2) To what extent do the value worlds of songbooks express the ideals of the Wandervogel movement? (3) What is the position of wandering among other values? (4) Is the representation of…

In many countries where English is used as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL), the classroom is the main context for students' exposure to the target language (L2); however, English teachers have a tendency to use the mother tongue (L1) excessively. As a result, the appropriate use of L1 in language classrooms remains as a major problem. This…

The National Policy on Education (NPE) in Nigeria stipulates that every child should be taught in the language of its immediate environment in the first three years of elementary education. This paper examines the NPE as it affects elementary schools in Ogu-speaking communities in Southwestern Nigeria. Using the research instruments of interviews…

We analyze whether non-native speakers in the classroom affect students' educational achievement and social integration. In contrast to previous studies, which mainly examine the effect of the share of immigrant pupils, we focus on language heterogeneity by using a novel measure of the degree of linguistic diversity in the classroom. Conditional…

Children are members of families and communities, and the languages learnt within these contexts contribute to a child's sense of "belonging, being and becoming" throughout life (Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, 2009). Encouraging children to bring their home languages into early childhood education and care…

The present study examines the influence of social distance and power factors on the use of internal and external mitigating devices and strategies in the production of requests by Korean learners of Russian. The data was collected by using a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) containing twelve situations that varied in the facts of power and social…

This paper reviews WordUp, a mobile application which fosters English vocabulary learning through exposure to new words in authentic and engaging contexts such as excerpts of movies, songs, and news programme. The samples of use are introduced after the definition of the target words have been provided in both the learners' first language and…

For years, the teaching of content-based academic language to multilingual learners has focused on formulas, vocabulary lists, and sentence patterns--often sidelining students' linguistic and cultural strengths. Gisela Ernst-Slavit and Margo Gottlieb address these challenges by embracing academic "languaging," an active, collaborative…

This study investigated the use of segmental and suprasegmental cues to lexical stress in word recognition by Mandarin-speaking English learners, Korean-speaking English learners, and native English listeners. Unlike English and Mandarin, Korean does not have lexical stress. Participants completed a visual-world eye-tracking experiment that…

The purpose of this study is to ponder some theoretical considerations concerning a predominant phenomenon of mental translation (MT) observed by second language teachers and learners in learning and using a second/foreign language. The sample available to the researcher consists of seven female adult learners speaking different languages. The…

This article introduces this special issue by declaring that the studies contained here build on the idea that multilinguals, in the sense of learners or speakers that have more than two languages in their linguistic repertoire, are different from bilinguals and monolinguals in various ways. Several authors in the area of third language…

This study was an attempt to investigate Iranian EFL learners' private speech across proficiency levels and gender while doing reading comprehension tasks. Moreover, it was an attempt to examine the different forms of private speech produced by Iranian English learners. Six forms of private speech were coded and analyzed: affective markers,…