Despite critical literacy being identified as a desired outcome of South Africa's new curriculum statement, in reality this does not seem to be occurring (DoE 2002, pp. 5, 11). Critical literacy is one way in which spaces of contestation and resistance can be opened up. In order to do so it is necessary to provide students with basic literacy…

This paper examines the turn-by-turn organization of social actions during educational activities at a multilingual preschool in Sweden. Specifically, it focuses on instructional exchanges within two commonplace activities: "sharing time" and "Spanish group". The study builds on earlier research arguing that interactional…

Since its inception in 2003, the popularity of "Second Life (SL)", an online 3-D virtual environment, has increased exponentially. The global reach of "SL" and the opportunities it provides for cross-cultural exchange using multiple modes of communication in real and virtual worlds make it an ideal venue to examine cross-cultural engagement.…

In recent years, the number of Spanish-speaking Latinos in Britain and London has grown considerably. Estimates from different sources put the population in London as high as 300,000. Unfortunately, this growing ethnolinguistic group is an underresearched minority, and information of any kind is hard to come by. In this article, my aim is to…

This paper explores some properties of very simple network structures. It argues that the behaviour of these structures might be able to throw some light on how real lexicons behave. The paper argues that working with very explicit and over simplified models of lexicons might sometimes have advantages over working with more realistic but vague…

While writing centers and writing fellows programs have been integral components of many colleges and universities in North America, these models of student-to-student learning are starting to develop in postsecondary institutions in other parts of the world, particularly in the Arabian Gulf. In particular, there are growing number of…

This study investigated how immigrants from Latin America who speak indigenous languages perceive and respond to social, racial, linguistic, and cultural factors in the United States. It examined the multicultural and multilingual experiences of six participants, five of whom speak an indigenous language. There were three interviews conducted with…

Despite Australia's strong tradition of research on language maintenance and shift, little is known about the ways in which migrant background students continue to use their heritage languages in Australian schools. This paper presents an in-depth case study of students' linguistic practices at a multiethnic Melbourne high school, where over 95%…

English has always occupied the most privileged position in the South African economy, yet legislative and material provision emphasised bilingual or trilingual education prior to political change in 1994. Educational changes since this time have been accompanied by ambiguous stances towards languages other than English in the classroom. Whilst…

This ethnographic inquiry examines how family languages policies are planned and developed in ten Chinese immigrant families in Quebec, Canada, with regard to their children's language and literacy education in three languages, Chinese, English, and French. The focus is on how multilingualism is perceived and valued, and how these three languages…

Given that there are neural markers for the acquisition of a non-verbal skill, we review evidence of neural markers for the acquisition of vocabulary. Acquiring vocabulary is critical to learning one's native language and to learning other languages. Acquisition requires the ability to link an object concept (meaning) to sound. Is there a region…

In the past decade, language memoirs, linguistic autobiographies, and learners' journals and diaries have become a popular means of data collection in applied linguistics. It is not always clear however how one should go about analyzing these data. The aim of this paper is to offer a critical review of analytical frameworks applied to second…

Shop and cafe signs in multiple languages are familiar features of polyglot immigrant neighborhoods. This paper examines such signs, presenting photographic, observational, and interview data from a multisited ethnographic study of language contact in Ghent, an urban Belgian city. Drawing upon diverse ethnographic sources, especially the…

The 5th International Conference on Language, Literature and Culture has been hosted by Mehmet Akif Ersoy University (Burdur, Turkey), in cooperation with Çankaya University (Ankara, Turkey) and Süleyman Demirel University (Isparta, Turkey). Our main aim has been to provide a forum for discussion, to facilitate integration in these fields, and to…

This case study used photo elicitation interviewing (PEI) to analyze perceptions of Latino students and their teachers in a multilanguage high school academy. It examined student involvement in school, dropout rate, and pursuit of a college education. Ten academy teachers and 10 Latino senior students were interviewed. Observations obtained…