Grammatical complexity has been established as a key indicator of language and writing development (Ortega 2003; Bulté and Housen, 2014; Crossley and McNamara 2014). The present study uses the Register-Functional approach to complexity (Biber et al. 2022) to compare the development of L1 English and L2 English writers across year of study and…

Infants undergo fundamental shifts in perception that are reported to be critical for language acquisition. In particular, infants' perception of native and non-native sounds begins to align with the properties of their native sound system. Thus far, empirical evidence for this transition--perceptual narrowing--has drawn from socio-economically…

Having heard "a pimwit", English-speakers assume that "the pimwit" is also possible. This type of productivity is attributed to syntactic categories such as NOUN and DETERMINER, but the key question is "how" do humans become endowed with these categories in the first place. We propose a novel approach that combines…

Little is known about how monolingual ideologies and their effects manifest in online contexts as compared to offline contexts. We conducted a corpus-assisted discourse study to investigate this, with a focus on Twitter representations of Spanish as a heritage language in the USA. We analysed two corpora (one English and one Spanish--over 30…

Purpose: Conferences, while central to academic endeavors, are an understudied research site. This purpose of this study is to describe the experience of an Arab Israeli teachers' college in hosting a large international academic conference on multiculturalism, conducted entirely in English. Most of the academic staff and all of the students are…

Based on the theory of change, we gather, organize, and synthesize the evidence on the impact of three language of instruction (LOI) choices (teaching in mother tongue [MT] with later transition, teaching in a non-MT language, or teaching in two or more languages at one time) on literacy and biliteracy outcomes. We focus on quantitative and…

Drawing on positioning theory and Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of mind, this study analyzes the discursive processes through which expert and novice positions are negotiated in heritage-second language (HL-L2) learner interaction. It examines how positioning practices shape collaboration between HL and L2 learners, determining what types of…

Phonics instruction, originating in English-speaking countries, has gained considerable momentum in China, both within and beyond formal classroom settings. Despite its popularity, certain limiting factors arise when implementing phonics instruction for native Chinese speakers. These factors include the lack of prior exposure to lexical…

The current study examined the effect of the linguistic status of the verbal previewing strategy on the outcomes of reading comprehension tasks among second (N = 25, age 7.08 ± 0.3), and sixth-grade students (N = 25, age 11.75 ± 0.25), with typical reading development. The texts for each group were carefully matched and were divided into three…

The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of heritage language usage among adolescents from immigrant families on the enhancement of family bonds and ethnic identity among Arab immigrants. In order to accomplish the stated objective, a total of 321 expatriates and their respective families residing in Saudi Arabia were surveyed, and…

Despite some research attention given to expatriate native-English-speaking teachers' (NESTs) identities and the national educational ideologies that have led to their international recruitment, surprisingly little research has addressed their career trajectories as TESOL professionals. To address this gap, this case study explores the career of a…

Translanguaging theory and pedagogy have emerged as central to the recent multilingual turn in educational linguistics and language teaching, including ELT. This article will explore translanguaging from theoretical and practical perspectives, aiming to clarify what it is and is not claiming, and what types of pedagogic practice it advocates, both…

The Rivers of Reading methodology has been used previously to explore children's reading development, but very little research focusing on multilingual children exists. Similarly, reading for pleasure in multiple languages has received little attention. This paper addresses both these gaps. Seven children aged 8-13, across six multilingual…

This paper reports on a study of Chinese parents' involvement in their children's heritage language (HL) development during the COVID-19 lockdowns in the UK. Involving seven transnational families, we examined the roles parents played during the online learning sessions and the factors shaping their involvement. Employing a netnographic approach,…

This case study examines emergent, evolving language ideologies of a trilingual child, from age 3-7, who was simultaneously acquiring two heritage languages, Korean and Farsi, as well as English in the United States. A qualitative analysis of the child's conversations in a naturally occurring home context extends the literature centered on the…