Provides a historical overview of attitudes toward immigrants and their languages in the United States, gives an update of the Official English movement, and analyzes recent articles in business-related journals. Discussion centers on how businesses have adapted to a multilingual workforce and on the connection between the Official English…

Focuses on the communicative approach in plurilingual settings and analyzes data from Indian English in the light of the speaker/listener, the task, the context, and other negotiating factors that regulate speech in everyday life. Identifies the complementarity of grassroots English with other Indian languages and its emergence as one of the vital…

Since most of the world's population is bilingual, why should the most "advanced" Western nations be so resolutely monolingual? European schools should teach the first foreign language at primary level, become bilingual institutions, teach all children at least two languages, increase the number of languages taught, shorten instructional…

English can be considered the number one global language. Though there are positive aspects to having a global language, it can lead to arrogance and complacency among native English-speakers and a sense of grievance and inferiority in other language groups. The paper examines reasons for the spread of English worldwide, discussing the importance…

Examines the need for accountability in language planning in multilingual contexts in the Southern Countries. Provides a brief overview of language diversity in the South, considers how world trends of increasing democratization and strengthening of minority rights are generating calls for greater accountability and language rights, and looks at…

States that despite the country's relatively small population and the globalization pressures from the international community, the Icelandic language and culture have remained strong. Reports that Iceland's language policy comes from the government's and official institutions' commitment to the people of Iceland, who are determined to preserve…

Explores the notion of diglossia in the three main languages of Fiji--Bauab Fijian, Shudh Hindi, and English. Discussion focuses on situating the languages both historically and socially in a multilingual context. (Author/VWL)

Teachers from Hong Kong (N=437) responded to English, math, Cantonese, and Mandarin self-concept items. Confirmatory factor analysis found good support for the distinction of 4 domain-specific self-concepts. English self-concept had a low correlation with Mandarin self-concept (r = .09) and a negative correlation with Cantonese self-concept (r =…

This study traces the ways in which an Arabic-speaking immigrant girl in Cyprus positions herself towards the different gender ideologies that she encounters at home and in school. Through Nadia's linguistic choices and discursive strategies we come to see how competing gender codes, meeting at the crossroads of geographic, linguistic, and…

In this article, we share how 2 multilingual/multicultural school communities work to build strong relationships with immigrant families to support parent involvement and language minority student achievement. (Contains 1 footnote.)

Cameroon, a central African state is one of the few countries in the world where, in addition to a very rich linguistically diverse landscape (a little below 300 identified indigenous languages) there is English and French (all vestiges of colonial legacy) used as official languages. Coupled with this, there is pidgin English which plays the role…

Tibetan civilisation is over two millenniums old and, today, its struggles in diaspora open up a new chapter in Tibetan history. Diasporic Tibetans (e.g. in India and the USA) have made tremendous efforts over the last few decades to maintain their way of life. We focus on cultural identity in the Tibetan diasporas, with special attention focused…

This study was conducted against the background of a British government initiative--The National Literacy Strategy--which prescribes a daily hour of formal literacy instruction for primary aged children, known as the Literacy Hour. The paper describes the developing understanding and experience of literacy of four bilingual Year Five children,…

This paper examines the language use of a small group of interlingual families of a Japanese parent and a Filipino parent with their offspring living in Japan and qualitatively explores possible explanations for their particular language use. Although the data collected from the subject group are limited, the data analysis does reveal some…

This paper reports the results of a study of primary school mathematics teaching in northern Botswana in order to highlight the strategies teachers use in bi/multilingual classrooms. Questionnaire and interview data collection procedures were used. The findings, which are based on responses of randomly selected primary school teachers, confirmed…