Grounded in sociocultural theory, this study uses an ecological approach to examine how student interactions within a dual-language school context may offer affordances for increased linguistic and conceptual understanding. Using qualitative analysis of student discourse, this paper focuses on data from recorded interactions between pairs of…

This article explores how a linguistically diverse, subject English class can become a multilingual contact zone in which naturalised linguistic identities are made visible and interrogated. The research is situated in a highly diverse, educational context--Wits School of Education in Johannesburg, South Africa. This is framed by a society in…

The data discussed in this paper is drawn from research conducted in a multilingual urban primary school in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the official language of instruction is English and the majority of learners are African language speakers, frequently with very limited English proficiency. The paper presents a case study of one child who…

English has always occupied the most privileged position in the South African economy, yet legislative and material provision emphasised bilingual or trilingual education prior to political change in 1994. Educational changes since this time have been accompanied by ambiguous stances towards languages other than English in the classroom. Whilst…

Thousands of students in California learn English as a second language in schools that utilize exclusively monolingual--English Only--literacy programs. With such programs students do not have the opportunity to use the knowledge of their first language in order to acquire and master their second language. The project of cooperative bi-literacy…

This article contains a description of the Dual Proficiency (DP) program in an urban elementary school located in the heart of a large south-western city, as well as the teachers who designed and now implement DP, and the immigrant community participating by choice in DP. We write from a context where, ironically, the number of English language…

The socio-cultural settings of English-language and English-medium classrooms are intrinsically bi/multilingual and bi/multicultural as both learners and teachers bring their multiple identities and home-community languages and sociolinguistic practices into the classroom. However, more often than not in such contexts, monolingual ideologies are…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the washback effects of the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) on English teaching in two applied foreign language departments in Taiwan. One had prescribed its GEPT requirement to its day-division students whereas the other had not. Overall, the GEPT did not induce a high level of washback on…

This paper is about a writing and literary translation program called Poetry Inside Out (PIO). Students in the PIO program study poetic form and structure, figurative language, and the fundamentals of literary translation in an extended workshop format. During a typical Poetry Inside Out workshop, participants read, discuss, translate and recite…

The arrival of substantial cohorts of English language learners from Africa with little, no or severely interrupted schooling is requiring new pedagogic responses from teachers in Australia and other Western countries of refugee re-settlement. If the students are to have optimal educational and life chances, it is crucial for them to acquire…

This article reports on a case study of an exemplary teacher who was a participant in a professional learning project, WriteIdeas. The teacher provided instructional support in writing to a targeted student with learning difficulties in an inclusive Year 8 English classroom. Analytical frameworks were developed and applied to the data that had…

This article concerns the way that research into Professional Memory (PM) in English teaching might re-connect the school subject with constituencies--the individuals, communities and social values--it once served. By PM I mean the collective memories of a generation of English teachers which, when brought into conjunction with existing histories,…

During the years following the Second World War, members of the English teaching community in London, often within the London Association for the Teaching of English, conducted work which led to a "new" English for the emerging comprehensive school system. Such work was rooted in the belief that English teaching should be responsive to the…

This study collects 11 high-school EFL conversation textbooks used in Korea and sees how the textbooks teach culture since language learning is closely tied to culture learning (Kramsch, 2002). Conversation materials are chosen because socio-cultural values and norms are best acquired during the process of interaction (Scollon & Scollon, 2000).…

In this classroom narrative article I discuss some of my experiences as a teacher in an Australian government-funded English language development aid project during the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). The program formed part of an emergency response to the devastating violence that accompanied the Indonesian…