This paper explores the concept of social inclusion from the perspective of recent migrants, from language backgrounds other than English, at work in Australia. We adopt an understanding of social inclusion that acknowledges the importance of economic independence, while also considering migrants' feelings of connectedness at work and their sense…

Depending on the demands of a particular communicative situation, bilingual or multilingual speakers ("bilingualism-multilingualism") will switch between language varieties. Code-switching is the practice of moving between variations of languages in different contexts. In an educational context, code-switching is defined as the practice…

The rhetoric around global connectedness and advances in information communication technologies (ICTs) suggests that: Professional life for the marginalised and isolated language teacher should be easier; the experience of language learners in Australian schools should be more meaningful and bring them closer to the languages and communities that…

This study outlines a linguistic profile of two subgroups of Italian English circumstantial bilinguals - one dominant in English and the other dominant in Italian--by exploring for the first time their linguistic repertoire through the Gradient Bilingual Dominance Scale (Dunn & Fox Tree, 2009). The scale takes into account language…

As countries are confronted with the complexities of integrating new immigrants within their national borders, the ability of new arrivals to use the language or languages of their adopted country has increasingly become viewed as essential to the process of their integration and assimilation. The use of language assessments as a requirement for…

The Comprehensive English Regents Exam, also referred to as the English Language Arts (ELA) Examination, is a widely used measure of student achievement in the K-12 system in New York, yet it is not without criticism. One concern is that the ELA Regents Exam may be contributing to the widening of the gap in graduation rates between English…

Fairness, an essential quality of a test, has been broadly defined as equitable treatment of all test-takers during the testing process, absence of measurement bias, equitable access to the constructs being measured, and justifiable validity of test score interpretation for the intended purpose(s) (AREA, APA, & NCME, 2014). Given that test…

As internet-based remote communication became one of the primary modes for human interaction, particularly when it has been adopted in instructional and educational contexts, researchers have begun exploring various features of the interactions occurring on or mediated by these platforms. Garcia and Jacobs (1999) examined students' exchanges on a…

In a number of educational contexts, it is common for two or more teachers to "co-teach," or collaborate on-site together in a classroom. Despite the popularity of this arrangement, the body of discourse-analytic literature on co-teaching remains small. In an effort to contribute to the work on co-teacher interaction and, more…

Stance refers to a display of a socially recognized epistemic or affective attitude toward a referent or proposition (Ochs, 1993). Although this display of attitude can be performed linguistically, paralinguistically, and non-verbally (Du Bois, 2007), it has primarily been explored in terms of linguistic strategies (use of reference terms,…

The present study was an attempt to examine the impact of input flooding (IF) and textual enhancement (TIE) on EFL learners' syntactic development. Four homogenous groups were selected based on the pre-test and placement tests. During the treatment, the first group (i.e., IF) received reading comprehension passages in which the structure was…

Etymologically, the word 'sarcasm' is derived from the Greek "sarkazein," meaning "to speak bitterly or sneer", or, more literally, "to tear flesh" ("sarcasm," 2014). Sarcasm, then, is far from a benign feature of language, and there appears to be an inherent acerbity, or even a note of provocation, located…

Hand-raising is an extremely useful device for classroom self-selection. There are instances, however, where hand-raising is concurrently employed with the self-selector's onset of speaking, while teacher invitation or nomination is absent. Although it appears to be one way for would-be self-selectors to successfully seize the floor, the…

In the assessment of aural skills of second language learners, the study of the inclusion of visual stimuli has almost exclusively been conducted in the context of listening assessment. While the inclusion of contextual information in test input has been advocated for by numerous researchers (Ockey, 2010), little has been said regarding the…

Giving instructions for a classroom activity can be a tricky business in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom, especially when the students' proficiency level is low and the instruction is composed of multiple steps. Teachers may depend on linguistic resources only so far as students can understand the words and grammar used, which…