There is nothing more motivating than to feel you have something to contribute to a group situation. The Nilsens have used that basic premise to devise activities that teach all students about the connections between languages while highlighting the special expertise that bilingual students can add to such a conversation. Activities and word lists…

The paper that follows is part of a larger project aiming to examine the textual production of writers having access to more than one set of representational resources. It is premised on the notion that access to such dual or multiple resource-bases permits the production of texts that are 'marked' in salient and systematic ways. (Contains 1 table…

This study is built upon an understanding of a wide range of variables including foreign language education in Turkey, the sociolinguistic profile of English, the phenomena of code-switching, language transfer (in particular second language transfer in third language production), teaching of a second foreign language after English, plurilingualism…

This paper examines the prominence of written English on shop signs in Japan. Based on data from a larger empirical study into multilingual signs in Tokyo, the most common ways of using English and the roman alphabet on Japanese shops signs are identified. It is argued that the ambivalent nature of English loan words plays a key role in the ever…

The focus of this paper is on speakers' rationalisations of their everyday linguistic choices as members of a multilingual academic department in the US. Given the monolingual macro-context, the myriad of native languages spoken by participants, and the professional stake in language competence, the question of how speakers arrive at language…

The challenge posed to foreign language (FL) education by globalization and by the multilingual multicultural speech communities it has spawned is showcased by the current crisis in the teaching of German at American colleges and universities. It is not clear why American learners of German should be learning German: for business purposes, for…

Recent national security concerns and global trade interests have led many to claim that there is a foreign language "crisis" in the US. Some argue that heritage and community language (HL-CL) speakers in the US constitute a resource waiting to be tapped to solve this crisis. This article addresses the issue of whether heritage and community…

Multilinguals appear to become better at learning additional languages the more languages they know, and in particular, to be faster at learning grammar. This study investigates the use of grammar learning strategies in 144 participants who knew between 2 and 12 languages each, using a language background questionnaire, a set of 40 grammar…

We present a model allowing the measurement of the returns to plurilingual competences in a small open economy, considered as a reduced model of an open European labour market where different nationalities work together and therefore need to communicate either in one or in multiple languages. Our results suggest that high plurilingual competences…

This study examines the factors influencing language and script choice in instant messaging (IM), a form of real-time computer-mediated communication, in a multilingual setting. Grounded in the New Literacy Studies, the study understands IM as a social practice involving texts, encompassing a range of literacy practices, within which a subset…

Purpose: To develop a reliable and valid questionnaire of bilingual language status with predictable relationships between self-reported and behavioral measures. Method: In Study 1, the internal validity of the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q) was established on the basis of self-reported data from 52 multilingual adult…

Joel Spring (2007/this issue) argues that in most nation states around the world today, English plays a central role primarily as a commodity of globalization. At the same time in the United States, English is being perpetuated in nationalistic terms as the only legitimate language. This is done through a variety of mechanisms such as language…

In this article, the author shares the strategy she adopted to even out the participation among her multicultural students during their classroom discussions. The author realized that her students had different concepts about the classroom and different philosophies about competition. For the Americans and Indians, the classroom was a site of…

The essays in this volume have been selected from papers presented at the 13th World Conference of the World Council for Curriculum and Instruction. The first WCCI Conference held in England in 1974, was followed by conferences in Turkey, the Philippines, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Egypt, India, Thailand, Spain, Australia, and again, the…

To compete in the work force today, the global and national economy demands our 21st century learners to write efficiently, effectively, and coherently. Due to minimal progress in writing scores over the past decade, spelling has increasingly become a subject of national debate as poor spelling can impede a writer's ability to formulate ideas and…