Suresh Canagarajah is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor and Director of the Migration Studies Project, Departments of Applied Linguistics and English, Pennsylvania State University, USA. Having a BA with a major in English from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, Professor…

The study aimed to explore the indigenous language of Gujjar and Bakerwal tribal communities of district Ganderbal of Jammu and Kashmir, India. The design of the study is qualitative in nature. The researcher employs purposive sampling in selecting the sample. The researcher surveyed 81 Gujjar and Bakerwal households and interviewed 22 (19 Male…

The purpose of this study was to explore if teaching ELF would help students change their beliefs about language and language learning. Firstly, students were interviewed in person, and they were found to have a lack of motivation and negative attitudes towards learning English with standard norms. It was also noticed that the students are not…

Scholars have at various points discussed the needs of second language (L2) writers enrolled in "mainstream" composition courses where they are mixed with native (L1) English speakers. Other researchers have investigated the experiences of L2 writers in mainstream classes and the perceptions of their instructors about their abilities and…

This study examined the latent factors of dialect variation as they relate to reading achievement of second grade students. Sociocultural theory, identity theories, and critical theory used against a metaphorical backdrop of a bundle of locks were used to illustrate the complexity of language variation and its effect on reading achievement within…

The leading position of English as a global language has evidently been continuing for several decades. This pivotal role has inevitably been influencing the agenda of English language teaching and teacher education in most domains of the profession. Although English as a lingua franca (ELF) implications and practices on teaching and teacher…

Drawing on linguistic anthropological notions of language ideologies and sociolinguistic approaches to stance, this study examines the meaning-making resources through which Spanish heritage language (HL) learners orient toward ideological perspectives on language value and linguistic expertise in classroom interaction. Part of a larger…

Teacher education represents an essential step to raise awareness of the sociolinguistic changes brought about by the current pluralization of English and by its lingua franca role. Within the pre-service teacher education programs run at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Verona, Italy, part of the English language…

English language teaching (ELT) currently occurring in diverse social settings points to the need to locate ELT in its social context. Many researchers have highlighted the need to explore local vernacular practices, in particular ELT practices in peripheral contexts. The present study investigates events in an English language classroom at a…

Professional development on issues of language and culture is often separate from professional development on issues related to STEM education, resulting in linguistic and cultural gaps in K-12 STEM pedagogy and practice. To address this issue, we have designed a model of professional development in which we work with educators to build cultural…

There are primarily two discourses on slang: one is based on the Linguistic Purism View (slang is seen as an ugly, poor and/or dirty vocabulary); and on the other hand, the Socio-historical-cognitive view understands slang as a rich component of language (BARRA, 2007; MATTIELLO, 2005; ZARBALIYEVA, 2012). Taking this into consideration, this…

Although there seems to be no doubt that English as a lingua franca paradigm has affected the focus of English language teaching toward the issue of mutual intelligibility, studies involving only non-native English speakers (NNS-NNS interaction) are still in their infancy. Using a sequential analysis, this study examines how Japanese learners of…

The growth of English into a lingua franca has inevitably created linguistic deviations and innovations in the use of English. These emerging uses that result from the needs and preferences of speakers whose mother tongues are all different can be broadly identified as lexico-grammatical and pronunciation features and they compose one of the main…

Much second language acquisition research in recent decades has assumed that a learner's main purpose for learning a second language (L2) is to develop communicative competence. Consequently, many studies have focused on investigating ways in which teachers and/or the learning environment may support the development of such competence. In…

This paper explores the perceptions of Iraqi students of three different English Programs (a general English for academic purposes program, a pre-enrolment English program and the English component of a disciplinary bridging program) at an Australian University as reflected in their language learning narratives. It focuses specifically on the…