This paper investigates the effect of multiple cultures and languages on the bilingual utterances of Libyan children who live in the United States and who have acquired English after they arrived there at ages from 3 to 5. Data analysis is based on the Markedness Model (Myers-Scotton, 1993) in order to determine which language is the unmarked code…

Stimuli used in cued language switching studies typically consist of digits or pictures. However, the comparability between both stimulus types remains unclear. In the present study, we directly compared digit and picture naming in a German-English language switching experiment. Because digits represent a semantic group and contain many cognates,…

Rapidly changing demographics challenge education systems everywhere. Multilingualism, in particular, brings challenges in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Here we draw attention to contexts and practices of multilingual education in southern settings that differ from those in northern ones. Whereas much of the literature indicates that…

This case study explores the language attitudes and perceptions of Korean parents, with regard to their children's native language maintenance and ESL education in the US. The primary focuses are on (1) what aspects are held by Korean parents toward the maintenance of the native language in the US, and (2) how these perspectives operate in their…

The authors report on a study aimed at exploring the role of a teacher education program (TEP) rested upon the tenets of critical pedagogy in influencing teachers' cognitions and practices concerning first-language (L1) use in second-language (L2) classrooms. Participants were 10 Iranian English as a foreign language teachers, whose cognitions…

This is the first collection of research studies to explore the potential for mixed methods to shed light on foreign or second language learning by young learners in instructed contexts. It brings together recent studies undertaken in Cameroon, China, Croatia, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Tanzania and…

The starting point for this report was to consider the complex field of English Medium Instruction (EMI) policies in low and middle income countries (LMICs). Its purpose is to provide insight and support to those responsible for setting policy or enacting it in complex language environments around the world. This research study set out to do two…

Considering a Latin@ fifth-grade dual-language classroom (Spanish/English) as a community of practice, this paper explores how a bilingual teacher and her bilingual students, as members of such community, utilize translanguaging (García, 2009) as a learning and teaching tool in social studies and science classes. In this particular classroom, the…

The present study investigates inter-individual variation (linked to personality traits, multilingualism and sociobiographical variables) in attitudes towards code-switching (CS) among 2070 multilinguals. Data were collected through an online questionnaire. We found that high levels of Tolerance of Ambiguity (TA) and Cognitive Empathy (CE), and…

This paper examines a family language policy (FLP) in the context of an extended bilingual Gaelic-English family on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. It demonstrates how certain family members (namely, the children's mother and paternal grandmother) negotiate and reify a strongly Gaelic-centred FLP. It then discusses how other extended family members…

Languages tend to be modified to accommodate for the speakers needs, such as, discussing or dealing with certain topics and domains. An example, university students, in Jordan, modify their own language, being colloquial Arabic, with terms and expressions from the English language in order to interact and adapt to everyday college life. Due to…

This phenomenological study (Creswell, 2003, 2007; van Manen, 1997) explores student and teacher perceptions of first language use in French immersion mathematics classrooms at a large, urban high school in Canada. During individual interviews, participants discussed their perceptions and experiences of French immersion mathematics, language use,…

Though the topic enjoys a general currency within informal scholarly debate, this is the first linguistic study to explore the nature and extent of the use of English in Omani EIL students' everyday lives. It delineates the social factors that influence this use and offers a data-driven analysis of the most frequently found linguistic patterns and…

In this article, we provide a framework of bilingual grammar that offers a theoretical understanding of the socio-cognitive bases of code-switching in terms of five general principles that, individually or through interaction with each other, explain how and why specific instances of code-switching arise. We provide cross-linguistic empirical…

This article offers a review of some of the major issues of bilingualism in education in Malta. It starts by contextualising the current situation in a historical perspective. From the macro-perspective it then moves to a micro-perspective to illustrate how, in practice, Maltese and English are used as a bilingual medium of instruction across…