This article consists of two sections: in the first one, I discuss one of the most prevalent lay myths in the Western world with respect to communication and understanding, namely, the view that meaning resides in words and that it is transmitted from one language user to another in a conduit, as it were. In the second section, I refer to my own…

In this paper, we employ quantitative and qualitative content analysis to investigate the nature of humanistic value content in the Chinese language arts curriculum and whether or not this varies across old and new versions of the textbooks. Our findings illustrate the various dimensions of humanistic value content in the Chinese language arts…

This paper views Nigeria as a multilingual country with diverse languages and cultures to the extent that the total number of languages spoken right now in Nigeria is about 500 (See Adegbite 2010). This linguistic diversity in the country has occasioned the development and the spread of the concepts of bilingualism, multilingualism, diglossia and…

The validity of speech act data taken from different kinds of elicitation instruments has been widely discussed in interlangauge and cross cultural pragmatics literature. In this study an attempt is made to evaluate and investigate data taken from two of the most popular speech act instruments namely, written DCT and closed role play. The…

This qualitative study describes and analyses young language learners' spontaneous comments while sharing picture books during EFL sessions. It also explores teachers' responses to learners' comments, and considers reasons teachers may choose to ignore children's talk in their first language (L1). Data were collected from young Hungarian learners…

This dissertation investigates second language (L2) development in the domains of morphosyntax and semantics. Specifically, it examines the acquisition of definiteness and specificity in Russian within the Feature Re-assembly framework (Lardiere, 2009), according to which the hardest L2 learning task is not to reset parameters but to reconfigure,…

For all families with deaf children, choosing communication methods is a complex and evolving business. This process is particularly complex for migrant background families, who must not only negotiate the role that speaking or signing will play in their communication practices, but also which spoken language(s) will be used--that of the host…

Recent data indicate that many adolescent English language learners (ELLs) comprehend English texts at only a limited literal level. The purpose of this research synthesis was to systematically identify and describe the research related to the English reading comprehension of middle grades ELLs while also making practical connections to…

This article reports findings from 3 experiments examining whether 2nd language (L2) words are represented in episodic memory, as originally proposed by Jiang and Forster (2001). Experiment 1 was a direct replication of Jiang and Forster, testing highly proficient Chinese-English bilinguals. Masked translation priming was obtained in an episodic…

In the process of language learning, individuals must acquire different types of linguistic knowledge, such as the sounds of the language (phonemes), how these may be combined to form words (phonotactics), and morphological rules. Early and late bilinguals tend to perform like natives on second language phonological tasks that involve pre-lexical…

This thematic issue on education and the politics of becoming focuses on how a Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) plugs into practice in education. MLT does this by creating an assemblage between discourse, text, resonance and sensations. What does this produce? Becoming AND how one might live are the product of an assemblage (May, 2005; Semetsky,…

Seven successive curricula for Swedish in the Swedish primary school are investigated using a linguistic method that traces its origin to the Russian literary theorist, Michail Bakhtin. The amount of dialogicity, viewed as the room given to different paradigms to argue against each other, is shown to decrease from the earlier curricula to the…

This article makes a case for studying the perceptions that young people have of the ways of speaking of both themselves and others on the supposition that constructions of ambient sociolinguistic variation have an impact on the language development and use of individual language users. Such a study is particularly relevant in multilingual…

Based on fieldwork at a weekend Japanese language school in the USA in 2007-2009, this article illustrates the ways in which different regimes of government arise from an activity depending on meanings individuals invest in it. We examine how two students in the same classroom experienced two different regimes of government: one of a low-track…

Grammar instruction is at the center of the target language (TL) and code-switching debate. Discussion revolves around whether grammar should be taught in the TL or using the TL and the native language (L1). This study investigated the effects of French-only grammar instruction and French/English grammar instruction on elementary-level students'…