In an era of globalization and global migration multilingualism represents a central educational goal for international political institutions and educational systems. However, except for bilingual schooling programs, institutionalized learning usually takes place monolingually, especially in Europe. Peer-Learning seems to be a promising method…

Language development of preschoolers can be positively stimulated and enhanced by exposure to language of peers. Likewise, interactions of young learners with native-monolingual classmates may contribute to their L2 development. However, research on peer interaction effects in young learners' domains of L2 development is meager. This qualitative…

This case study explores how simultaneous Turkish-English bilingual identity emerges from a child-raising context where English is neither the first nor the primary language of the parents or the community. In the context of Turkey, where a special value is attributed to the English language knowledge, Turkish--English bilingualism is associated…

The current study aims to provide an understanding of how the relationships between standard and non-standard varieties of the Turkish language are perceived by young people of Turkish Cypriot descent within the context of Turkish complementary schools in London. These schools are set up by diasporic communities to fight/reverse language shift and…

The paper focuses on the communication of three bilingual couples, each speaking a different lingua franca (LF). Positioning theory offers a methodological framework to explain language choice in interactive positioning within personal contacts. A comparative view of the couples' storylines benefits from the differences between them. The analysis…

The aim of this study is to investigate how early childhood educators and parents support emergent bilingual children's emergent biliteracy skills in Turkish and English, in particular, their phonological awareness (PA) in the two languages. Having socio-cultural lenses, an embedded single case study using ethnographic tools was conducted. A…

By exploring two novel concepts, "heritage language anxiety" (HLA) and "majority language anxiety" (MLA), this study draws attention to the hitherto neglected topic of "language anxiety" in immigrant and minority contexts. Based on semi-structured interviews with three generations of Turkish immigrants in the…

Studies on aging and migration often note a 'language barrier' for older migrants when communicating in a (medical) second language (L2) context. Yet how a limited L2 proficiency impacts the aging process of migrant adults has, so far, not been systematically investigated. This question is important given that having a limited L2 proficiency may…

Determining how and why adult outcomes of heritage speaker (HS) bilingualism differ from monolinguals is difficult because it requires the reconstruction of developmental paths from end-state data. In an effort to address this issue, we examine HSs of Turkish in Germany at an early age of development (10-15 years old, n = 22), as well as…

Lexical development of bilingual children is influenced by a number of input factors. In the present study, early lexical skills of 25-month old children growing up with Turkish and German were assessed. Parents of 92 children filled out a newly developed list for productive Turkish vocabulary, as well as a vocabulary list for German. A parental…

This study explores language choice patterns during group work of bilingual pupils (Turkish-Dutch) in two mainstream primary schools in Flanders (Belgium). In each school, a group of four children performed eight different tasks, related to different subjects of the curriculum. During task performance, they were exceptionally invited to use their…

Recent studies on language learning motivation have foregrounded notions of identity formation and self-fulfilment. This paper takes two different theoretical frameworks as points of departure (Dörnyei's 'L2 Motivational Self System' and Kramsch's 'desire in language'), but it looks at the motivation/desire of the parents of young language…

The current study examines the attitudes of heritage language learners (HLLs) and second language learners (SLLs) about their classroom language learning experiences and language learning in general, using data from high school students who participated in STARTALK summer language study programs in 2014 and 2015. Analysis of students' responses to…

The present study aims at finding the differences between bilingual and monolingual learners across gender in the use of cognitive, metacognitive, and total reading strategies, as well as reading comprehension ability. To this end, 50 Persian-Turkish bilinguals and 36 Persian monolinguals participated in the study. A standard test of reading…

Lexical development in first language (L1) Turkish and second language (L2) German in two- to three-year-old children was examined, using parental vocabulary checklists in Turkish and in German. Children showed strong Turkish dominance in the number of lexical items they produced, which was due to the more frequent exposure to Turkish and higher…