The identity formation of Australian-trained Vietnamese teachers of English is explored by looking at their experiences as TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) students in Australia and as teachers of English in Vietnam. On the one hand, the paper consolidates the understanding of identity in relation to difference and…

In Britain, since the 1980s, the term "equality of opportunity" has been a major theme at the heart of the government's agenda. Centralisation via the National Curriculum documents has strengthened the idea of "education for all". In terms of many linguistic minority children, mainstreaming and the English as an Additional Language (EAL) provision…

This study examined data collected over a period of three years from 48 children adopted from Eastern European orphanages. English language acquisition and present levels of performance were measured by the standardised language assessment, the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL). The participants ranged from 3 to 16 years of age,…

From a legal and institutional point of view, the current situation of the different languages in Spain has a double basis: the fact that the Spanish Constitution acknowledges the country's multilingual and multicultural character, and the country's organisation into Autonomous Communities. Such a constitutional framework has made it possible for…

This paper explores ways of using culture and cultural practices as an informing principle in ESL teaching. To research culture and ESL teaching, we conducted focus groups with teachers in an urban ethnically diverse school in Toronto, Canada and their student teachers during their month-long practice in the school as a part of a Bachelor of…

This paper reports on the Reading Kiosks English literacy project carried out in Opa-settlement, Ile-Ife in Nigeria. In all, 46 girls between the ages of 7 and 22 years took part in activities such as journal writing, shared reading, uninterrupted sustained silent reading, world literacy day celebration, story telling, retelling and writing, a…

A qualitative, ethnographic investigation of a Canadian, undergraduate, advanced Hebrew course composed of heritage language learners of diverse backgrounds examined the fluctuating notion of the target language (TL) community in second language teaching. Data collection techniques of participant observation, in-depth, semi-structured focus group…

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.…

Learning to read and write is a psycholinguistic and social process. That is why mother-tongue speakers of minority African languages find learning to read in the language they speak is a qualitatively better learning experience than learning to read in a language they are unfamiliar with. However, reading methodologies used for teaching reading…

The purpose of this paper is to examine a language policy in a two-way immersion programme and to explicate the dimensions as well as dynamics involved in the teacher's interpretation and implementation of the policy. The Korean-English two-way immersion kindergarten classroom where this research was conducted, adopted a 70: 30 language…

In the teaching and learning of foreign languages, the native speaker has traditionally been the model to aspire to. However, more recent approaches to the discipline have been moving away from this notion. Foreign language education finds itself at present at a crossroads with multiple models of language and culture competence. So far no…

What syntactic patterns emerge in students' use of articles and modals? What are the reasons for these patterns? What implications do the findings of the study have for English language instruction in Botswana? Exactly 1556 essays comprising class assignments, written seminar presentations, test papers and examination scripts from 514 randomly…

This study aimed at exploring motivational factors among American college and university students studying Japanese (as a second/foreign) language by examining their Peak Learning Experiences (Anderson et al., 2001; Bloom, 1982). In all, 128 students studying intermediate Japanese at five different schools returned their answers to this study's…

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…

This paper explores discourse features of Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and the need for sign language interpreting students to acquire an understanding of, and skills in, a range of discourse genres in Auslan in order to effectively carry out the work required in their profession. Discourse features of spoken English are outlined and compared…