This paper reports our experience in using a parallel corpus to teach Cantonese, a variety of Chinese spoken in Hong Kong, as a second language. The parallel corpus consists of pairs of word-aligned sentences in Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, drawn from television programs in Hong Kong (Lee, 2011). We evaluated our pedagogical approach with…

This study investigates the syntactic errors in speaking among an Arab L2 post-graduate student in an academic speaking context. Specifically, the objectives are to describe the syntax error patterns committed by the student while engaging in speaking and to explore the contributing factors that may affect the errors. To address these objectives,…

Linguists use the concept of "diglossia" to describe any sociolinguistic situation where a low-prestige dialect coexists with a high-prestige one and these dialects are used in different social spheres. Recent observations on Reunion Island have challenged this view because people mix French and Creole extensively in the same utterance…

In the Basque Country, Northern Spain, Basque (Euskera) and Spanish are official languages. In recent decades, Basque language revitalization and the efforts to make this an unmarked language (normalization) have co-existed with the rapid increase in immigration from outside the Basque region, and most recently from outside Spain. Given the…

The present study examines and compares the extent to which advanced L2 learners of Spanish and Spanish heritage speakers acquire the syntactic and semantic properties that regulate the grammatical representation of double complementizer questions in Spanish, a CP-related structure not present in English. Results from an aural sentence completion…

This study investigates Swedish students' ability to produce the discourse of the subject history, in a situation where they had to demonstrate historical knowledge in written explanations, and where both English and Swedish are involved. The students attend a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) programme at the upper secondary school…

The objective of this ethnographic case study is to describe in detail one professor's translanguaging practices in an undergraduate science course at an officially bilingual university. The data-set is comprised of ethnographic field notes of 11 observed classes, audio recordings of those classes, an interview with the professor, and artifacts…

This paper examines the French achievement results of three groups of students: Canadian-born English/French bilingual, Canadian-born multilingual and immigrant multilingual Grade 6 French immersion students, by investigating how the variables of integrative and instrumental motivations, attitudes to the learning situation, French language…

The linguistic transition that usually accompanies immigration is often related to a strong sense of split between two places, languages, identities and emotional settings. What happens, then, when people change countries and languages three, four or even five times during childhood and adolescence? In the present study, focusing on Third Culture…

This volume addresses the role of communicative interaction in driving various dimensions of second language development from the perspective of Vygotskian sociocultural psychology. Emphasizing the dialectical relationship between the external-social world and individual mental functioning, the chapters delve into a wide range of topics…

This study explored the common wisdom that sees Botswana as inherently ethnically homogenous. It used the existing Afrobarometer survey data drawn from Round 1 (1999), Round 2 (2003), Round 3 (2005) and Round 4 (2008). The findings of this study revealed that when using language spoken mostly at home, common wisdom is confirmed. However, it is…

The purpose of safety training is to avoid or at least decrease the number of work-related accidents and deaths. This study was concerned with the role that native language plays in effective training of adult construction workers in New Mexico. Specifically, this study examined workers' and trainers' perceptions of the effectiveness of safety…

Adult students of Catalan are worthy of study because they reveal complexities underlying taken-for-granted assumptions about Catalan speakers and Castilian speakers. Far from fitting into neat bundles aligning language of origin, social class, and national orientation, the students in this study exemplify the breakdown of boundaries traditionally…

In this paper, we present a synthesis of a series of studies, carried out by our research groups, from the Greek educational context on teachers' and immigrant students' views on issues of bilingual acquisition and of heritage language learning and teaching. Albeit including heterogeneous samples and employing quantitative and qualitative…

Many nations have attempted to create different language-in-education policies that would cater not only to the needs of learners but also to the demands of preserving a country's native languages. The emergence of multilingual education has led to a proliferation of research that shows the benefits of using a learner's first language. These…