At the editor's invitation this article was written as an analysis of the development of the intercultural dimension of foreign language teaching over the last 25 years. It is in part a personal reflection based on an article written for this journal 25 years ago, but it also draws on comments and insights from a network of researchers with…

This paper provides a snapshot of the manner in which English as a foreign language is taught in an elementary school in Helan County, China, in the nation's first decade of sweeping nation-wide educational reforms where English was first introduced as an official subject in 2001 and then as a compulsory subject in 2004. To cope with large…

In line with recent calls for a historicising of discourse analysis, this paper provides an account of language-in-education policies in Luxembourg since the creation of the Luxembourgish state in the early nineteenth century. We briefly expound the Luxembourgish language situation and educational system, and critically discuss the contemporary…

The formulation of a languages-in-education policy (LEP) in Ireland illustrates some challenges at the macro- and micro-levels. A clamour for policy has reverberated through language education institutions in Ireland within the last decade. This paper explores and discusses: (1) the trajectory of an LEP in Ireland from initial formulation to…

This paper examines issues related to the important impact of language policy in the Basque Country in recent decades. Basque, a minority language that was not allowed in the public space until the late 1970s, is an official language along with Spanish in the Basque Autonomous Community. The development of Basque has been most significant in…

Formulations of linguistic rights in European official documents reveal important ideological characteristics of the thinking about language in European societies. These ideologies have important consequences for the language policies and education policies pursued by authorities and for the norms of language use promoted by education systems and…

The focus of this paper is on US language policy statements that govern the priorities for teaching languages other than English in public schools and the language ideologies implied by specific management moves by the federal government to regulate language education, starting with the Bilingual Education Act (BEA) of 1968. Following introductory…

Globalisation and the global spread of English have led nation-states to introduce English into the early years of schooling to equip their citizens with communicative competence in order to compete within a global economy for individual and national development. In teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language, nations have adopted…

After China resumed the sovereignty of Hong Kong, the Curriculum Development Council encouraged schools to experiment with Putonghua as a medium of instruction (PMI) to teach the Chinese language. A review of the literature indicates that there have been problems in implementing the switch to the new medium of instruction (MOI). The aim of this…

This article brings together salient findings regarding communication and identity through studies of everyday social practices, studies of discourses about these practices and policy documents pertaining to special schools from "previous" and "ongoing" ethnographic projects based at the KKOM-DS (Communication, Culture and Diversity-Deaf Studies)…

This article describes the social, linguistic and academic integration processes of immigrant students in an area of low-density immigration in Quebec, Canada. Interviews were conducted with 15 secondary school students who had been in the country for 2 months to 4 years, in order to get a wide sampling of their experiences of the process of…

This paper, based on the findings of a qualitative study, discusses the influence of Ghana's recently introduced English-only language-in-education policy on pupils' classroom communicative practices and learning generally. It highlights how the use of English--an unfamiliar language--creates anxiety among students and stalls effective classroom…

Many inadequacies of Nigeria's schools derived from their religious and colonial past. One in particular is studied in this paper, namely opposition to the use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction. Questionnaires on the subject were administered to samples of 1000 primary school teachers and 1500 parents of primary school children.…

In this study we explore Korean immigrant parents' attitudes toward heritage language maintenance for their children and their efforts to help their children maintain Korean as their heritage language in Montreal. Some implications for mainstream school policies and classroom practices are touched on briefly. Data were collected from nine Korean…

Although Scots is listed by the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages as one of the UK's minority languages, its historical development and its contemporary standing have been significantly affected by a perception that it is a non-standard dialect of English, to which it is closely related, rather than a language in its own right. By…