Although Communicative Language Teaching is accepted by many English teachers in China as one of the most effective approach in English language teaching, there are still a number of misunderstandings about it. By comparing Johnstone; Sato and Kleinsasser and Thompson as well as Spada, this article focuses on four of the main misunderstandings,…

The unique needs, goals, and constraints of heritage language learners in U.S. higher education and the multiple ways that they differ from those of second and foreign language (L2) learners have been well documented (Brisk, 2000; Chevalier, 2004; Grosjean, 1982; Kagan & Dillon, 2003). Each population uses its two languages in diverse ways, for…

Originating from many different sources, Russian as a heritage language in Finland displays a spectrum of developmental tendencies: both attrition and maintenance can be observed in various degrees. The Finnish educational system allows for the organization of bilingual pre-schools and schools when there are sufficient numbers of potential pupils.…

In honor of CALICO's 25th anniversary, this study looks at the presence and collocations of the term "theory" across issues in 25 volumes of the CALICO Journal. Utilizing the electronic versions of articles now available to all subscribers and the built-in search engine on the CALICO website, 244 articles in which the word "theory" appeared were…

The focus of this article is to examine the notions of language learning, heritage (referring to tradition) and ancestry (descendants & properties passed on), and cultural identification for Urdu-speaking immigrant children now living in Canada. This article provides a detailed ethnographic account of an innovative language program developed…

This article addresses the situation of lower-proficiency heritage language learners of Spanish in terms of their linguistic similarities to second language learners. The analysis highlights grammatical and lexical features in the oral discourse of Spanish heritage and second language learners at intermediate and advanced levels of study,…

This article, based mainly on specific examples from the author's ethnographic fieldwork, outlines the state of bilingual education in Xinjiang and reviews its development. First, a broad outline is presented of the overall circumstances of bilingual education in China and Xinjiang. Next is an introduction to the present state of bilingual…

"Cheating" is a form of resistance in pedagogy for bilingual educators. Bilingual educators "cheat" in classes where English as the only language of instruction is strictly imposed by school or district officials, but these teachers "cheat" by using the native language of their English language learners because they know they must. But, for many…

This study introduces a typological model of the "conceptual language-specific approach" to the L2 research on the acquisition of tense-aspect. The model is based on the typological notion of prominence, classifying languages into tense-prominent and aspect-prominent (Bhat 1999) and the L1 research proposal that language-specific…

Subtractive education through the medium of a dominant language often transfers Indigenous and minority (IM) children to the dominant group linguistically and culturally within one or two generations. It may lead to the extinction of Indigenous languages, thus contributing to the disappearance of the world's linguistic diversity. A partial result…

In Ratanakiri province, northeastern Cambodia, the majority of the local people are native speakers of ethnic minority languages. Primarily subsistence farmers, they use their own language to communicate with others in their villages, and as they work in their rice fields. A baseline survey taken between 1996 and 1998 in five such villages showed…

English has become the medium for communication in so many areas, and children are the hope of the future and shoulder the duties to structure the future. Children's English becomes more important and spreads all over the world, especially in recent years. The children's English is not perfect and it exists its own disadvantages, so this paper…

Currently, we lack a viable indigenous language education framework for reservation public schools with mixed Native and non-Native student populations. Can stakeholders holding different and often conflicting points of view agree to accept and nurture Native language education programs in the public school arena? In search of a workable framework…

This paper focuses on how latent knowledge of an ancestral or heritage language affects subsequent acquisition by adults. The "latent speaker" is defined as an individual raised in an environment where the ancestral language was spoken but who did not become a speaker of that language. The study examines how attitudes, latent knowledge and…

Recently throughout Africa, there has been an increase in mother tongue primary education in minority language communities. There are many reasons for justifying this innovation, one of which is that local cultures are strengthened by mother tongue literacy. This paper examines the link between literacy and culture through the outcomes of a series…