In 1981, Swedish Sign Language gained recognition by the Swedish Parliament as the language of deaf people, a decision that made Sweden the first country in the world to give a sign language the status of a language. Swedish was designated as a second language for deaf people, and the need for bilingualism among them was officially asserted. This…

In this paper, we will describe the theoretical underpinning of many bilingual education programs for deaf children: Cummins' Linguistic Interdependence theory. Then, we will review some of the studies that have been conducted on the relation between reading and signing skills, and discuss how difficult it is to interpret their findings within…

New positive attitudes towards language interaction in the realm of bilingualism open new horizons for sign bilingual education. Plaza-Pust and Morales-Lopez have innovatively reconceptualised a new cross-disciplinary approach to sign bilingualism, based on both sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. According to this framework, cross-modal…

In this article, we adapt a concept designed to structure language testing more effectively, the "Assessment Use Argument" ("AUA"), as a framework for the development and/or use of sign language assessments for deaf children who are taught in a sign bilingual education setting. By drawing on data from a recent investigation of…

The ethnographic research reported in this article documents how a group of non-Korean families, whose children are participating in a Korean bilingual school in Northeast China, construct their motivations and strategies of learning Korean language. The main motivation of expectancy of further education opportunities and success in future career…

The father's role in children's L1 maintenance and L2 learning is a relatively unexplored area. This study considers the L1 and L2 proficiency of 30 Korean-English late bilinguals who immigrated to New Zealand during their adolescence and how their L1 and L2 proficiency is influenced by the language use of family members. Data were collected…

This article considers immigrants' perspectives on language immersion education. Data are drawn from a longitudinal research project that examined one suburban school district's construction of a two-way immersion (TWI), bilingual education policy. Analyses focus on 18 months of participant observation with six Mexican immigrant families who had…

Bilingual children sometimes produce constructions influenced by their other language (cross-linguistic transfer). Transfer can often be predicted by the existence of overlapping and ambiguous constructions in both languages. In this paper, we investigate whether cross-linguistic transfer occurs when overlapping constructions exist, but there are…

This article describes a South Africa-based training programme in multilingual education for African educators and assesses its potentially transformative effects on participants. Based on a range of data collected during four course runs, as well as an e-mail survey of past participants, the authors explore how the programme has supported…

A PhD literature review in the field of two-way immersion (TWI) education revealed that German TWI programmes are hardly ever mentioned in English-language publications. There have been several TWI programmes in Germany since the 1960s with an increase in number and language combinations since the 1990s. This article provides an overview of German…

As bilingual enrichment programmes that integrate language majority and language minority students, two-way immersion (TWI) programmes have the potential to overcome the harmful effects of segregation and remedial education that are the frequent byproducts of educational programmes for native speakers of languages other than English.…

Some US researchers and practitioners are calling for the use of written codeswitching in mainstream college courses, despite a strong English-only sentiment among many teachers and the public. This paper describes the existing positions in this debate and presents findings from the author's research to shed light on the debate and make…

This paper describes a content-based English for academic purposes (EAP) course, "Language and Public Life", and its major assignment, a research essay that critiques media coverage of a current event or social issue. The pedagogical context in which this assignment is realised underpins the forms of critical inquiry expected. The selection of…

Deaf learners whose first language is American Sign Language face particular challenges and constraints in developing literacy in English as a second language. These constraints are interrogated and discussed in terms of their relationship to issues of language proficiency in both L1 and L2, and to models of second language literacy education.…

The conclusion begins with an analysis of the common thread that ties the papers included in this special issue together. The collection hinges on an analysis of issues of language and power in diverse contexts, seen in a perspective "a la" Jim Cummins. Included in the Conclusion is a discussion of how the papers in this collection illustrate or…