What is the relationship between research into multilingualism and research concerned more generally with language and communication in mathematics education? Diversity in linguistic practices is universal in modern society and poses problems for teaching and learning even in apparently monolingual contexts. Research in multilingualism and…

In recent months the United States scrutinized the reauthorization of two critical pieces of legislation--those of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Law and the No Child Left Behind Act--and disagreed on many of the issues involved in these two pieces of legislation. We believe this is an opportunity to engage in a deeper examination of the…

Like plate lunches, aloha shirts, and lei, Pidgin is an important part of local identity in Hawai'i. While some people still think of Pidgin as "broken English," many now realize that it is a distinct creole language, similar to others that have developed in multilingual environments, and call it Hawai'i Creole or HCE (Hawai'i Creole…

Stories and poetry have long been considered a resource for the language and literacy development of bilingual children, particularly if they can work with texts in both mother tongue and English. This paper demonstrates that bilingual learning is also beneficial for second and third-generation children whose English is often stronger than their…

Spain took in more immigrants than any other European country in 2005, a fact which has had a clear impact on the education system. This paper examines the language attitudes held by 125 local or autochtonous (42.4%) and immigrant (57.6%) students in the Basque Country. The results showed that both groups of students held rather negative attitudes…

South Africa is a multilingual, multicultural context that poses communication challenges to health professionals. In a clinical trial, information must be thoroughly understood by participants in order for consent to be informed. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. This pilot study aimed to identify communication successes and breakdowns…

This article describes how minority language development and literacy activities were facilitated in a wartime context for Southern Sudanese language groups, particularly through the use of workshops. It also presents the voices of the language speakers themselves as they reflect on this process. A background discussion considers the importance of…

In this article, I examine the manner in which identity impacts on literacy practices, with reference to two 9-year-old girls and two 15-year-old boys who speak or have access to two or more languages. The younger children were part of a year-long study of the British National Literacy Strategy (Wallace, 2005). The older two were interviewed in…

The main argument of this overview article is that the Bantu languages of South Africa should have a far more significant role in education. We contend that the strong preference for English as medium of instruction among black learners is largely responsible for their inadequate educational performance, particularly since most of these learners…

To examine the relationship between phonological awareness (PA) and English word-level reading among a multilingual sample, a random sample of 297 Singaporean kindergartners, stratified by ethnicity (169 Chinese, 65 Malay, and 63 Indian), were tested on their PA, receptive vocabulary, and word-level reading skills. Singaporean kindergartners are…

One central question in the formal linguistic study of adult multilingual morphosyntax (i.e., L3/Ln acquisition) involves determining the role(s) the L1 and/or the L2 play(s) at the L3 initial state (e.g., Bardel & Falk, Second Language Research 23: 459-484, 2007; Falk & Bardel, Second Language Research: forthcoming; Flynn et al., The…

This study investigates Italian and French students' grammatical problems while reading in German as an L3 or L4. For the study, we developed a reading test which consists of invented encyclopaedia articles on imaginary animals. These articles enabled us to test various grammatical structures for their receptive difficulty. This paper discusses…

This paper examines linguistic diversity among minority ethnic undergraduate students categorised as from widening participation backgrounds in a new university in London. All students are British born and educated and from working-class families. The paper considers how the students negotiate multilingual and bidialectal identities within the…

This volume addresses the complex issues surrounding language teacher education, especially in EFL, and the development of professionalism in this field. By applying such concepts as Shulman's "pedagogical content knowledge", the development of teachers' knowledge base is investigated in a variety of settings, thus underpinning the contextual…

In this article, the author presents a discussion of how mathematics teacher educators model school mathematics teaching in initial teacher training colleges, as they prepare the student teachers to teach mathematics in multilingual classrooms in Malawi. In particular, the article examines the instructional practices that mathematics teacher…