In this essay, we argue that teacher education is increasingly marginalizing the relevance of teacher subjectivity and recentering Whiteness, especially in its uptake of practice-based teacher education. Whereas teacher subjectivity has been pushed to the margins of recent conversations about teacher education--and has therefore narrowed our…

The paper Languages in Contemporary Anglophone Caribbean Societies examines how language is treated in Jamaica and other Anglophone Caribbean societies and the effects of a haphazard approach to language planning on the social dynamics of the society as well as the individual. It briefly explores how Language is handled in Francophone or…

Depending on how one does the math, there are between a quarter-million and a million words in the English language. Of all these words, the author holds in contempt only one. That word is "like"--not the tepid expression of mild appreciation but the parasitic form that now bleeds the mother tongue, marks the user as a dunce, and, were it truly…

In this article it is argued that the development of young people's skills in using spoken language should be given more time and attention in the school curriculum. The author discusses the importance of the effective use of spoken language in educational and work settings, considers what research has told us about the factors that make group…

Opinions differ on the importance of the native speaker's concept for language teaching and testing. This Commentary maintains that it is important and seeks to explain why. Three types of grammar are distinguished, the individual's, the community's and the human faculty of language. For first language teaching and testing it is the community's…

This paper contributes to a debate on linguistic identity and social participation in France by providing a critical reading of language policy and practice. It challenges the notion that France is a linguistically homogenous nation where a standardised French language is universally practiced and, rather, seeks to reframe linguistic diversity and…

This article presents an adaptation of a position paper written by Da Pidgin Coup, a group of concerned faculty and students in the Department of Second Language Studies (SLS). In fall 1999, the group became concerned about a statement made by the chairman of the Board of Education implicating Pidgin in the poor results of the students of Hawai'i…

Every multicultural society has a language of power--the language spoken by members of the dominant group or groups--as well as languages that lack power because they are spoken by members of the subordinate group or groups. The ascension of one language over another has long been a source of controversy in Hawai'i, as it has in many parts of the…

Children of the poor are at greater educational risk than the children of the wealthy, but to what extent, if any, are these risks the result of undetected linguistic considerations? This chapter reviews long-standing issues that influence students' academic and social experiences in school as well as more contemporary debates that respond to…

Owing to analyses of large spoken corpora the linguistic knowledge of conversation has grown in recent years exponentially. Up until now little of this knowledge has trickled down to the EFL classroom. One of the reasons, this paper argues, is the failure in the relevant literature to spell out clearly how teaching conversational grammar affects…

This booklet presents a simplified and improved method of writing or spelling English, which simply uses the standard 26-letter alphabet to spell words the way they are pronounced. The booklet criticizes the conventional English spelling system as unnecessarily difficult, inconsistent, and illogical and suggests that easy-to-learn "Basic…

Examines the development and usage of abbreviations in modern French. (AM)

Presents a case for eliminating "whom" from standard English usage, with examples of why the use of "whom" brings not only needless worry but overzealousness in its applications. (RL)

Orthographic spelling, by definition, is standardized, and one may not freely label several different spellings of a word acceptable, particularly when a standardized spelling conforms to a general set or to spelling norms. Apparent anomalies, like "focuses," are discussed here. (PJM)

Differences in the role of Standard Australian English (SAusE) in a variety of Australian language educational programs are explored. The value of teaching SAusE (as opposed to a more international Standard English) both to non-native speakers learning English as a Second Language and to Aboriginal English speakers learning SAusE as a second…