This study examines L2 fluency in speaking interactions based on the number and type of utterances. The participants were 25 Korean eighth-grade learners of English as a foreign language. They performed five communicative tasks in groups, and their speaking interactions were audio-recorded and analyzed to measure the frequencies of sentence-level…

This research studies language policy, linguistic landscape and residents' perception of language use in Guangzhou, China, exploring the extent to which they are convergent with or divergent from one another. With the triad framework encompassing spatial practice, conceived space and lived space [Trumper-Hecht, N. (2010). Linguistic landscape in…

School principals are street-level bureaucrats whose sense-making about language policies makes them de-facto policy makers. In turn, their language policy-making is mediated by their language ideologies and contexts. Using a case study methodological framework, this article explores the language ideologies of 11 New York City elementary school…

This article aims to provide a comprehensive perspective on the use of first language (L1) in foreign language (FL) classrooms by reviewing recently published empirical literature from 2011 through 2018. The article focuses on literature relevant to four key areas: (1) extent and impact of L1 use; (2) factors influencing L1 and second language…

In bilingual settings, the communication between majority and minority language speakers usually takes place in the majority language. This paper examines whether majority language speakers, who receive positive feedback from minority language speakers when accommodating to them, use the minority language more frequently for authentic purposes. We…

This paper investigates how bilingual Upper Sorbian-German teachers who belong to the Sorbian speech community (Lusatia, Germany) introduce the minority language during German language lessons in an Upper Sorbian school. In Lusatia, as well as in Sorbian schools, bilingualism is not of equal character; minority language speakers are all bilingual…

It is well known that article usage is difficult for learners of English to acquire. Indeed, learner errors such as "*many of people" are not uncommon. A closer look at similar multiword sequences reveals why learners might have difficulty using articles properly in such expressions: No definite article is required in phrases like…

This study addresses the topic of visual communication and early sign language acquisition in deaf children with a Flemish Sign Language (Vlaamse Gebarentaal or VGT) input. Results are obtained through a checklist focusing on sign-exposed deaf children's visual communication and early sign language acquisition: the adapted VGT Visual Communication…

This study aims to investigate the usefulness of a deductive-cum-process writing approach to raise native Cantonese-speaking ESL students' awareness of the inappropriate use of informal language in academic writing. Achieving tone formality by incorporating appropriate syntactic and semantic elements poses great difficulties to freshmen at the…

This paper will analyze the function of final particle "yo", and factors that may affect the use of "yo" in order to avoid FTAs if there is any. The data used in this paper is a transcription of a 10-minute unscripted excerpt from a Japanese comedy variety show called "Shabekuri 007". The excerpt was first aired on…

Although the mapping between form and meaning is often regarded as arbitrary, there are in fact well-known constraints on words which are the result of functional pressures associated with language use and its acquisition. In particular, languages have been shown to encode meaning distinctions in their sound properties, which may be important for…

This study investigated the processing of English articles by second language (L2) speakers whose first language (L1) is Korean. Previous studies in L2 English article use had some issues unresolved such as using offline tasks, conflating definiteness with real-world knowledge, and operationalizing definiteness and relevant constructs in ways that…

This study investigates language attitudes expressed by public university students in India at various layers of agentive "positionality" as an integral part of their dynamic language ecologies. This is achieved through the qualitative analysis of three focus group interviews conducted at three public universities in India with the…

This research investigated avoidance behaviour, one of the strategies L2 learners may resort to because of L1-L2 differences, or the non-existence of L2 structures for L1 learners, i.e. the Avoidance Behaviour Hypothesis (Schachter 1974). However, based on the Factors of L2 Non-Avoidance Hypothesis (FNAH) (Thiamtawan & Pongpairoj, 2013, 2019),…

Virtual Reality (VR) is a valuable tool for learning, however, there is a lack of education-focused content for language learning needs. This article introduces the "VR Application Analysis Framework" (Lege, Bonner, Frazier, & Pascucci, 2020) to assist educators in scaffolding existing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) applications for…