This paper explores the ideologies of English in China through a meta-discursive analysis of Chinese netizens' comments on the performance of English by Huang Xiaoming, a famous Chinese actor. By applying Park and Wee's framework for analysing ideological evaluations of appropriation (i.e. ideologies of allegiance, competence, and…

Primary school enrolment in low-income countries has increased in recent years. The quality of education is, however, still a cause for concern. Better measurement of early reading progress has been suggested as a means of improving education quality. Benchmarks based on the number of 'words per minute' (WPM) students are able to read…

The historical background, political changes, migration processes, EU membership and the current socio-linguistic situation have all influenced language policy and language planning in Slovenia. This article presents the most important aspects of language policy in Slovenia with a focus on the concept of linguistic diversity. The ethnic make-up of…

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…

The goal of this research was to explore thoroughly the perceptions of dispersed immigrant professionals and their bilingual and bicultural children regarding the place of new media technology in their lives. Open-ended interviewing and autoethnography were used to explore families' perceptions of the role of media technology in their children's…

This article is based on results from a baseline study for an intended intervention project in bilingual-intercultural education in the Municipality of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, in the Department of San Marcos, Guatemala. To a great extent the article deals with issues of bilingual education from the perspective of social justice. It analyses the…

This study investigates language use and language attitudes in state kindergarten education in Cyprus. Kindergarten education is the primary setting where Greek-Cypriots learn to employ the standard variety on a systematic basis. Consequently, the context of kindergarten education is a principal setting for examining language attitudes and…

Subordinate femininity associated with feminine Japanese has been found to pose barriers for foreign language learners of Japanese, especially among Western female learners of Japanese. The present study investigates attitudes towards the use of both masculine and feminine Japanese among non-native professional speakers of Japanese. The latter's…

This qualitative study investigates attitudes toward heritage language (HL) maintenance among Chinese immigrant parents and their second-generation children. Specific attention is given to exploring (1) what attitudes are held by the Chinese parents and children toward Chinese language maintenance in the USA, (2) what efforts are engaged in by the…

A language currently at the nexus of change is Kashubian (in Polish: "kaszubski"), a West Slavic language spoken in northern Poland in the province of Pomerania. Termed a "regional language" by the Polish government in preparation for the ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (signed in 2003 and ratified in 2008),…

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.…

The case of Israeli Circassian students is unique because they study four languages which they require for daily life: Arabic is for reading the Koran; Hebrew is the language of the dominant group; English is an international language and is needed for academic purposes; and Circassian is their mother tongue. This study investigated the attitudes…

The paper reports the results of a survey of parents (n=12), teachers (n=8) and pupils (n=20) in primary schools in rural Kenya. The sample was divided equally between multilingual and monolingual schools, the former using English or Kiswahili only, right through primary school, the latter using the mother tongue (in this case, Kalenjin) Kalenjin…

Fiji is a multilingual country in the South Pacific with English, Fijian and Hindi being the official languages. As is inevitable in multilingual societies, language use is functional with Fiji Hindi and Fijian being the mother tongues of the two main ethnic groups in the country, the Indo-Fijians and the Fijians. English, because of Fiji's…

There is continuing interest in the notion of learner autonomy, both as an effective means and valid goal of a language learning curriculum. However, the concept is recognised as emanating from Western tertiary educational contexts and as open to question in different sociocultural settings. This paper reports on a study of language learning…