The Albanian language until it became a written and a spoken language to all of the Albanians, passed through a long and a difficult path. If you go back in time, you see how many efforts were made to preserve Albanian language and identity. Albanian intellectuals and patriots got their visionary aim of its preservation at all costs. Albanian…

This study was conducted in Maharashtra, India with children studying in a regional medium (Marathi) government school. In Marathi, the translation of the word 'about' is not very commonly used. The aim of the study was to see how the children used uncertain language about prediction while engaged in a statistical investigation and how children…

The aim of the Regional Dossier series is to provide concise descriptions of regional or minority languages in education, mainly in Europe but also in other parts of the world. Friulian is a Romance language, traditionally recognised as part of the Rhaeto-Romance sub-family. It is spoken in Friûl (in Friulian)/Friuli (in Italian), a territory…

The concept of learner engagement, widely researched in educational psychology, has recently gained attention of language acquisition researchers (cf. Mercer, S. and Z. Dörnyei. 2020. "Engaging Students in Contemporary Classrooms." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Mercer, S. 2019. Language learner engagement: setting the scene. In…

Whilst the links between learner corpus research (LCR) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) have long been debated, McEnery et al. (2019. "Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpora, and SLA: Employing Technology to Analyze Language Use." Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 39: 74-92. doi:10.1017/S0267190519000096) claim that learner corpus…

This article focuses on the description of one of the main features of current multilingualism, complexity, through a selection of issues related to its role in L2 acquisition, as the proper notion of multilingualism, multilingualism as a social phenomenon and multilingualism as a multidimensional phenomenon. We also present several aspects of…

This article presents our narration of the emergence and development of a research area about the teaching and learning of the English language in Colombia and the creation of a research group named Critical Studies of Colombian Education Policies. The narration includes a description of the bilingual education policy in Colombia and a literature…

Classrooms the world over are full of people who, for different reasons, are learning additional languages and/or are studying through languages that are not their first. Gaining insight into such contexts is complicated for researchers and practitioners alike by the myriad of contextual variables that come with different implementations and make…

The present study evaluated the effects of explicit instruction on advanced French second language (L2) learners' (n = 18) contextually appropriate use of two stylistic variables (/l/ deletion vs. retention and "ne" deletion vs. retention) using two different task types. A planned and unplanned oral task was used to assess students'…

This article presents findings from an exploratory research project entitled "Gaelscoileanna and Multicultural classrooms: the potential for transfer to enhance L2 learning experiences". The project focussed on two language immersion contexts in Ireland which, despite obvious differences, share a range of significant commonalities. One…

The issue of teaching pragmatics in foreign and second language classrooms has received a lot of attention in the recent years. Its origins can be dated back to the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSRAP) led by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) and the research on interlanguage speech acts that followed (for a comprehensive…

Since 2005, I have been working with members of the Kari'nja community of Konomerume, Suriname to document, describe, preserve, and revitalize their heritage language, the Aretyry dialect of Kari'nja (Cariban family). Simultaneously, I have worked to develop, pilot, and articulate a model of field research that depends on participation from speech…

The School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham hosted the fifth annual conference in the "Innovative Language Teaching at University" series. Under the heading "Enhancing participation and collaboration" the conference, organised by Cecilia Goria, Oranna Speicher and Sascha Stollhans, took…

In 1981, Swedish Sign Language gained recognition by the Swedish Parliament as the language of deaf people, a decision that made Sweden the first country in the world to give a sign language the status of a language. Swedish was designated as a second language for deaf people, and the need for bilingualism among them was officially asserted. This…

This paper quantifies differences in speaking rates in a first and second language, and examines the effects of slower rates on the speakers' abilities to convey information. The participants were 14 fluent (CEF B2/C1) English L2 speakers who held the same oral presentation twice, once in English and once in their native Swedish. The temporal…