We investigate the extent to which language versions (English, French and Arabic) of the same science test are comparable in terms of item difficulty and demands. We argue that language is an inextricable part of the scientific literacy construct, be it intended or not by the examiner. This argument has considerable implications on methodologies…

This case describes St. Lucy School, a K-8 elementary school in a mid-sized urban center. St. Lucy has traditionally served African American students. In the past 10 years, the neighborhood has experienced a significant shift in population, such that many Latino/a families are now entering the school. In response to these changes, the school…

This study adds to the research on the education of Asian immigrant adolescents by situating how generation, language, nationality, and race complexly impacted how a group of 1.5-generation Japanese youth have made sense of their multiple "non-dominant" identities as immigrant Americans and transnational students within an urban high…

This study was based on the view that collective conceptions of learners have intimate connections with both social and linguistic analysis and language education. It set out to examine systematically the perceptions of Chinese college students on English and English education against the background of both the increasing role of English in the…

Explicit instruction in strategies for interlanguage pragmatic learning is fundamental to the development of a comprehensive set of pragmatic abilities in the target language. In this article, we begin by providing an overview of previous work in the area of language learner strategies directed at the teaching and learning of pragmatics. We then…

This dissertation explores language as a resource for the formation and expression of ethnic identity among the members of an Asian American college sorority. As a community of practice organized around ethnicity, the sorority provides an excellent site to examine the mutually constitutive relationship of language and ethnic identity. Two features…

Adopting a quantitative approach, this paper highlights findings of an exploratory study on Hokaglish, initially describing it as a trilingual code-switching phenomenon involving Hokkien, Tagalog, and English in a Filipino-Chinese enclave in Binondo, Manila, the Philippines. Departing from the (socio)linguistic landscape of the archipelagic…

As English becomes an established lingua franca in the ASEAN region, what should be the pedagogical approach to oral skills and pronunciation teaching in the region? Should teachers target common features and patterns developing in ASEAN English or target more "Western" pronunciation? This study strives to balance the discussion of the…

The present longitudinal study describes and categorizes the primary changes in L2 Spanish intonation over time by 11 learners studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina for one academic semester. Via the autosegmental metrical model of analysis, this dissertation classifies intonational contours for absolute interrogatives and declarative…

We argue that opening a space for dialogic, imaginative writing in the classroom can create entry points for a culturally responsive writing pedagogy (CRWP). We explore how collaborative writing for a pre-existing community digital platform (FundZa) and audience aids the implementation of CRWP in a creative writing course for South African…

"Although" is a frequently used subordinating conjunction in English. However, non-nativeness is often observed in Chinese EFL learners' "although" output during pedagogical practice. This paper aims at exploring the characteristics of Chinese EFL learners' "although" employment in Chinese EFL learners' writing. The…

Drawing on linguistic anthropological notions of language ideologies and sociolinguistic approaches to stance, this study examines the meaning-making resources through which Spanish heritage language (HL) learners orient toward ideological perspectives on language value and linguistic expertise in classroom interaction. Part of a larger…

Idiom variation is a ubiquitous linguistic phenomenon which has raised a lot of research questions. The past approach was either formal or functional. Both of them did not pay much attention to cognitive factors of language users. By putting idiom variation in the framework of linguistic subjectivity, we have offered a new perspective in the…

The present study is concerned with lax /[upsilon]/-fronting in Standard British English and in particular with whether this sound change in progress can be attributed to a waning of the perceptual compensation for the coarticulatory effects of context. Younger and older speakers produced various monosyllables in which /[upsilon]/ occurred in…

What are the sources of variation in the input, and how much do they matter for language acquisition? This study examines frequency variation in manner-of-articulation classes in child and adult input. The null hypothesis is that segmental frequency distributions of language varieties are unigram (modelable by stationary, ergodic processes), and…