In recent years, contentiously for some, universities have developed generalist skills lists and associated curricula in response to government demand for more "employment-ready" graduates. Such training usually includes writing and communication. In Australia and the UK, guidelines designed to support the development of skills…

Californians often take for granted a split between ethnic and linguistic identities, expecting immigrants to maintain strong ethnic identities while becoming monolingual in English. However, recent immigration has led to increasing diversity at California universities, with no majority ethnic group and many students bilingual. This study explores…

The study aimed to identify different second language (L2) learner motivational types drawing on the framework of the L2 motivational self system. A total of 1,278 secondary school students learning English in Iran completed a questionnaire survey. Cluster analysis yielded five different groups based on the strength of different variables within…

Drawing on the appraisal framework from systemic functional linguistics (SFL), this article examines patterns of stance in a corpus of 92 high- and low-graded argumentative papers written in the context of an upper-level course in economics. It interprets differential patterns of stance in students' texts in light of interview commentaries…

This article examines the Multiple Grammars (MG) theory proposed by Luiz Amaral and Tom Roeper in the present issue and presents a critique of the research that went into the theory. Topics discussed include the allegation that the bilinguals and second language learners in the original article are primarily students in an academic setting, Amaral…

This case study of a science lesson, on the topic thermal expansion, examines the language demands on students from an integrated science and language perspective. The data were generated during a sequence of 9 lessons on the topic of "States of Matter" in a Grade 7 classroom (12-13 years old students). We identify the language demands…

This article describes a study that attempted to evaluate the integration of wikis as an educational tool in successfully achieving the learning objectives of a fifth-grade linguistics and literature course. A mixed-method approach was employed--data were collected via questionnaires, reflective journals, observations, and interviews. The results…

This study, part of a larger linguistic ethnographic enquiry carried out in two primary school classrooms in Flanders and the Netherlands, sheds light on the perils faced by the ethnographer caught between pupils' inventiveness and his own ethnographic naivety when dealing with these pupils' ethnolinguistic identity construction. The…

This article analyzes the sources cited in articles published in two linguistics journals, "Applied Linguistics and Journal of Linguistics," from 2001 to 2010. A retrospective descriptive study was conducted using bibliometric indicators, such as types of cited sources, timeliness of cited sources, authorship patterns, rank lists of the…

While the essay is the default assessment tool of the Humanities in upper secondary and tertiary education, it is a text type that has been slowly bled of communicative purpose. It is suffered by students, taught according to restrictive formula and ignored in the literature. Evidence from the tertiary sector, employers and public examinations…

Griffith University is set across five campuses in south-east Queensland, Australia, and has a student population of 43,000. The School of Languages and Linguistics (LAL) offers programs in linguistics, international English, Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Spanish, as well as English language enhancement courses. Research strands reflect the…

Recent studies in linguistics have shown that metaphor is ubiquitous. This has important consequences for language learners who need to use it appropriately in their speech and writing. This study aims to provide a preliminary measure of the amount and distribution of metaphor used by language learners in their writing across Common European…

This paper explores the linguistic landscape (LL) in the southern Austrian province of Carinthia, which is home to an autochthonous Slovene minority. Following several decades of political and legal debate known as the "Ortstafelstreit" ("dispute of topographic signs"), recent legislation has strengthened the status of Slovene…

Language conceptualised as multilinguality is constitutive of being human and may be a potential site for negotiating conflict and exploring paths of harmony in education. In various domains of activity, most people would rather see "a language" as a homogeneous, pure and standard pairing of a lexicon and syntax. There is substantial…

This study presents an overall review of the paradigms that contribute to the making and development of functional human linguistics and communication skills and the teaching of language.