This article reviews a selective corpus of empirical and theoretical texts on foreign language pedagogy and teacher education, produced in Portugal between 2006 and 2011. A descriptive and interpretative approach is adopted to inquire into the transformative potential of research, with a focus on its scope, purposes, conceptual and methodological…

This study critically examines the literacy levels of undergraduate students in Pakistan to compare and contrast the proficiency levels, particularly reading and writing of their mother tongues versus Urdu and English, and to study real and perceived vitality of local/regional mother tongues vis-à-vis Urdu and English. The research investigated…

Assessment and placement practices at community colleges that are used to divide students into college ready, ESL and English remedial tracks play a key role in shaping the academic pathways of students (Hughes & Scott-Clayton, 2011). These assessments are based on assumptions of the nature of bilingualism and student needs and thus have…

In this paper, the author focuses on educational values and second language learners' experiences from education. She is using a life story approach. Overarching aim of the presentation is to discuss second language teacher students' encountering with Swedish school, mother tongue tuition, second language and multilingualism. The goal was achieved…

This study investigated the role of domain-general inhibitory control in trilingual speech production. Taking an individual differences approach, we examined the relationship between performance on a non-linguistic measure of inhibitory control (the Simon task) and a multilingual language switching task for a group of fifty-six native English (L1)…

This introduction provides the background for this special issue by first describing the US-Mexico border, a fascinating context in which to research issues related to Spanish-English biliteracy and multilingualism. We present main points in the prevailing discussion within the field of literacy studies about issues of multilingualism and…

Conducting research into young learner experiences of school poses methodological challenges which are compounded when, as is increasingly the case, the classroom interaction is multilingual and the research methods are participatory. Each new or adapted method sheds further light on the issues that can arise. Researcher-initiated role play is a…

Uganda introduced the use of mother tongue as medium of instruction in primary schools in 2007. This was meant to promote interaction and participation in the learning process and improve children's proficiency in reading and writing. Drawing elements of interaction and participation from the socio-cultural theory, the child-centred pedagogy was…

As the number of university students taking part in exchange programs abroad increases, students are becoming more aware of the importance not only of improving their general language skills, but also of developing academic language skills that will prepare them for their stay and study in transnational higher education contexts. Concurrently, the…

Personal, social, cultural, economic, and political factors influence the language/s used by family members in the home domain. This study examines how family language policies are planned and developed in Filipino-Malaysian families in Malaysia. The language used at home in such mixed or exogamous marriages is also influenced by the ethnicity of…

This study addresses academic literacy in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) secondary education. More precisely, this paper focuses on attempts to meet modern standards for language competences set in areas like Europe, where the notion involves multilingual academic competence. The study centres on new proposals for language…

Negotiating their double identity as Mauritians and Muslims in multilingual and in multiethnic Mauritius, Mauritian Muslims have been socialised into reading and writing in Kreol in madrassahs, while they have never been exposed to Kreol literacy in mainstream education. At the point where Kreol is being introduced as an optional school subject,…

We seek to understand how bilingual adolescent students leverage multiple languages and modes in digital composition. Using a translingual and multimodal perspective of composition, this study reports on the distinct communicative affordances associated with four students' multimodal codemeshing practices. Through analysis of students' digital…

The success of Canada's immigration policy is intrinsically tied to employment of an immigrant workforce. Teaching is the fourth largest profession among Canadian immigrants, yet immigrants whose occupations are in education are three times less likely to be employed in their matching profession. Failure to incorporate an immigrant workforce not…

In an age of transnational mobility, there has been a growing recognition of the need for both English and French mainstream classroom teachers to be trained to teach increasingly plurilingual student populations. In this article, I begin by describing the context for an exploratory comparative and collaborative ethnographic action research study…