Research in multilingual societies often attends to the micro level of linguistic interactions, as linguistic minority speakers negotiate their way through a majority-language world. However, this research does not always engage with the social, political and historical contexts that produce and reproduce the conditions within which some…

This article draws on constructs in second-language acquisition, literacy, cultural, and media studies as theoretical bases for examining how networked technologies and fan culture provide a young English language learner (ELL) with a site for developing her English language and writing skills. During this process, she also develops an online…

We contend that generalizability (G) theory allows the design of psychometric approaches to testing English-language learners (ELLs) that are consistent with current thinking in linguistics. We used G theory to estimate the amount of measurement error due to code (language or dialect). Fourth- and fifth-grade ELLs, native speakers of…

This article is the second part of a report on research that examined immersion language teachers' strategies to modify their speech in order to maintain use of the target language. As described in the first part in "Babel," Volume 40, Number 2 (Veque, 2005), this classroom-based research, undertaken at Methodist Ladies College (MLC) in…

While it has become common to employ pronunciation oriented software to improve one's pronunciation in L2, both language teachers and L2 learners feel uncertain about choosing software to meet their purposes. Taking "MyET", pronunciation oriented software written and highly praised in Taiwan, as a representative program, this study…

The developments of new technologies over the last decades provide some answers to the limited exposure imposed on second/foreign language (L2) learners, who study a target language in an academic setting in countries where that language is not actively used. Not only are such learners restricted in their exposure to the L2 in the formal academic…

This article examines alternating verbs (such as "quemar"(se) "to burn") in second language (L2) Spanish by considering the learnability problem from a sequence learning perspective (N. Ellis, 1996, 2002). In Spanish, verbs of the alternating class are obligatorily marked with the clitic "se" in their intransitive form. Errors of omission among…

This study, situated in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context where non-English major college learners are usually required to read content-area textbooks in English, tried to determine what motivates students to engage in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) reading activities. Three student informants were invited to reflect on their own…

In this paper, I argue for a response to the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse students that is both high challenge and high support. In elaborating this argument I draw on an English literature programme that was designed for a year 7 boys' class (the first year of high school) in an Australian public school. The students in the…

The Special Education and Disability Act (SENDA) 2001 required post-16 institutions to have implemented the Disability Discrimination Act Part IV (DDA) 1995 by September 2005. In this paper a lecturer in Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) and a specialist teacher of the visually impaired from the Centre for Special and Inclusive Education at a…

Prior to submitting a paper to a science journal, many European scientists employ language professionals to check that the English is acceptable. What influences these language professionals' criteria of acceptability? How do they interact with the authors for whom they work? And how do journals' criteria of acceptability affect their work? In…

This monograph focuses on the development of colonial and post-colonial language policies and practices in Zimbabwe, attributing changes to evolving philosophies and politics in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe. In colonial Zimbabwe, we argue that the language policies had as one of their key objectives the development of a bilingual white…

The year-long study that was the context for this article explored the complicated relationship among the shaping of ESOL as a school construct, the historical legacy of colonialism, and the contemporary influence of globalizing forces on the teaching of English worldwide and the lives of multilingual students enrolled in ESOL. In the context of a…

Over the years, Ms. Lane's third grade mathematics classroom had become increasingly diverse. Challenged by the growing population of English Language Learners (ELL) and her need to change her teaching practice to meet their needs, Ms. Lane selected to study how best to teach one of her greatest challenges, Ana, a Latino ELL who also had a…

The use of English by foreign language teacher is a matter of much controversy. Whereas language switching by English-speaking foreign language teachers has been the focus of previous research, relatively little is known about the amount of teachers' language used in the classroom when comparing native speakers of the foreign language with…