This article examines how Spanish-speaking Latina (im)migrants position themselves relative to US language policies. Drawing from interviews with 15 Latin American women in the USA, we illustrate how understandings of language policy are constructed through individuals' reports of everyday experiences and framed within the constraints of…

A "cognitivist" approach to cognition has traditionally dominated second language acquisition (SLA) studies. In this article, I examine two alternative approaches--"extended cognition" and "embodied cognition"--for how they might help us conceptualize SLA. More specifically, I present: (i) summaries of extended and embodied cognition, followed by…

Since the mid-20th century, graduate schools in the USA have witnessed a growing participation of international students, many of whom do not speak English as their first language. Previous research has often portrayed non-native-English-speaking (NNES) students in US doctoral programs as disadvantaged because of the presumed primacy of English in…

Previous research on second language (L2) vocabulary learning has examined the relationship between word properties and learnability (e.g. Ellis and Beaton 1993). Few studies, however, have examined patterns in partial word form learning as a method of assessing learnability and improving our understanding of allocation of processing resources…

Coinciding with the global boom in commercial English language teaching is the development of a sizeable publishing industry in which UK-produced textbooks for the teaching of English as an international or foreign language are core products. This article takes the view that these "curriculum artefacts" can also be understood as "cultural…

This study of incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading, involving 72 freshmen at two Asian universities, investigated (i) the effect of repeated encounters with target words on the development of seven aspects of word knowledge, and (ii) the effect of L1 lexicalization on the acquisition of meaning--does the absence of an L1 translation…

Across the globe, the use of English is a popular advertising technique. The ever expanding body of studies on this topic has revealed a number of explanations for the use of English in the advertising. It can be related to the larger marketing strategy of a campaign, to the cultural connotations English carries, or English can be used for…

Previous studies on L2 Japanese sojourners often reported that learners overuse the plain style or haphazardly mix the plain and polite styles upon return. These styles, which are often associated with formal or informal contexts, also index complex social and situational meanings, and native speakers are reported to shift their styles to create…

Previous studies on English as a second language (L2) argue for the relative ease of object "wh"-questions based on the finding that L2 learners are more accurate and faster in judging the grammaticality of object "wh"-questions than that of subject "wh"-questions in English. This article re-examines this claim by investigating L2 learners'…

We present an analysis of the use of diagnostic labels such as "seizure", "attack", "fit", and "blackout" by patients who experience seizures. While previous research on patients' preferences for diagnostic terminology has relied on questionnaires, we assess patients' own preferences and their responses to a doctor's use of different labels…

This article explores the citing behaviors of 16 undergraduates in a North American university. After completing a research paper for their disciplinary courses, each participating student was interviewed to identify in his/her writing words and ideas borrowed from source texts and to explain why and how the relevant texts were appropriated with…

Currently, restrictive-language policies seem to threaten bilingual education throughout the USA. Anti-bilingual education initiatives have passed easily in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts, while one was closely defeated in Colorado, and federal education policy has re-invigorated the focus on English education for English language…

Repair practices used by teachers who work with children with specific speech and language difficulties (SSLDs) have hitherto remained largely unexplored. Such classrooms therefore offer a new context for researching repairs and considering how they compare with non-SSLD interactions. Repair trajectories are of interest because they are dialogic…

This research creates an empirically derived, pedagogically useful list of formulaic sequences for academic speech and writing, comparable with the Academic Word List (Coxhead 2000), called the Academic Formulas List (AFL). The AFL includes formulaic sequences identified as (i) frequent recurrent patterns in corpora of written and spoken language,…

Within a Dynamic System Theory (DST) approach, it is assumed that language is in a constant flux, but that differences in the degree of variability can give insight into the developmental process. This longitudinal case study focuses on intra-individual variability in accuracy rates and complexity measures in Finnish learner language. The study…