Intercultural bilingual education (IBE) has been discussed in Bolivia since the 1970s. The first Educational Act with a bilingual and intercultural curriculum adapted to cultural and linguistic diversity--Ley de Reforma Educativa--was passed in 1994 with implementation starting in 1996. However, discussions continued: when the Evo Morales…

The concept of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has recently caused a great deal of controversy, much of it based on a misunderstanding of ELF. In this presentation, I shall first provide a brief history of lingua francas and then compare and contrast two major Asian lingua francas--Bahasa Indonesia and Putonghua--in order to show how different…

Guided by sociocultural theory and the theory of multiliteracies, learning is perceived as a shifting participation in practices, which is mediated by multiple physical and symbolic tools. Drawing on the situated multiliteracies approach, which integrates these two theories, the purpose of this ethnographic research is to examine the participation…

If children do not learn how to read in the first few years of primary school, they will struggle to complete the cycle, and are at greater risk of dropping out. It is therefore crucial to identify and test interventions that have the potential of making a large impact, can be implemented quickly, and are affordable to be taken to scale. This is…

This paper derives from an ethnographically oriented study of the emergence of English in innovative disciplinary speech events at a French-German bilingual university in Switzerland. From the outside viewed as dissent from the university's brand bilingualism, the use of English as a lingua franca enabled the multilingual "agents of…

This document describes a solution to a problem in the automatic content scoring of the multilingual character-by-character highlighting item type. This solution is language independent and represents a significant enhancement. This solution not only facilitates automatic scoring but plays an important role in clustering students' responses;…

Three-quarters of Singapore's population consists of ethnic Chinese, and yet, learning Chinese (Mandarin) has been a headache for many Singapore students. Recently, many scholars have argued that the rhetoric of language planning for Mandarin Chinese should be shifted from emphasizing its cultural value to stressing its economic value since…

This paper analyses laughter in spoken academic discourse, with the aim of discovering why lecturers provoke laughter in their lectures. A further purpose of the paper is to identify episodes in British data which may differ from those in other cultural contexts where other lecturing practices prevail, and thus to inform the design of study skills…

This article reviews part of the progress of the first year of the Isan Culture Maintenance and Revitalisation Programme (ICMRP), a four-year 540,000 euro series of pilot studies co-funded by the European Union and based in Thailand. The ICMRP is based in four semi-autonomous municipalities in Khon Kaen Province, viz. Ban Phai, Chum Phae, Khon…

In the multinational corporation (MNC) context the crossing of linguistic boundaries and the fast-paced change of linguistic ecologies due to market trends and new business activities is the rule rather than the exception. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to discuss language policy and language practice in one consortium of three…

This article describes a five-week summer literacy program designed for a group of 70 multilingual refugee boys resettled from their home countries in Africa and Asia to a city in the Southeastern USA. The students attended local public schools but struggled to experience academic success in the traditional classroom. The summer program addressed…

In Ukraine, the Russian and Ukrainian languages have historically alternated in policy and practice in their official status and social prestige. As in many areas of the world, English is emerging in Ukraine as a language of economic value, social prestige, and education though it is not a language of wider communication. The goal of the research…

"Pragmatics & Language Learning. Volume 13" examines the organization of second language and multilingual speakers' talk and pragmatic knowledge across a range of naturalistic and experimental activities. Based on data collected among ESL and EFL learners from a variety of backgrounds, the contributions explore the nexus of pragmatic…

This article presents a review of five chapters in "Part II, Section C: Diversifying Curriculum" of "The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction" (F. M. Connelly, M. F. He, J. I. Phillion, Eds.; Sage Publications, 2008). These chapters ["Curriculum and Cultural Diversity" (Gloria Ladson-Billings, Keffrelyn D. Brown. Chapter 8, pp. 153-175);…

This study investigates early childhood educators' language training competence that is required to support children's linguistic development. Hundred and forty-four early-years-professionals in Germany completed a computer-based assessment. We first tested knowledge of linguistic topics (e.g. morpho-syntax, developmental stages). Second, we…