In Ratanakiri province, northeastern Cambodia, the majority of the local people are native speakers of ethnic minority languages. Primarily subsistence farmers, they use their own language to communicate with others in their villages, and as they work in their rice fields. A baseline survey taken between 1996 and 1998 in five such villages showed…

There is currently no fixed programme for sequencing of formal reading instruction in Irish-medium schools and practices vary considerably. This study compared the development of reading skills in the Irish and English languages of children from varying linguistic backgrounds and schooling experiences. Three age groups of children (N = 254)…

The purpose of the current study is to examine language influence in sequential bilinguals. Specifically, this study evaluates whether performance in a first language predicts success in the acquisition of a second language nine months after exposure to the second language begins. Forty-nine Spanish-speaking children attending English-only…

What makes people, in shifting power positions of a post-independence period, plan on disusing an already known L2 or learn a new L2? What are the reasons for such shifts and what outcomes can, therefore, be predicted for the future of societal bilingualism surviving alongside ongoing efforts at monolingual unification in a newly independent…

This article revisits factors in intergenerational language maintenance and shift within the family. It does so through an in-depth analysis of what 14 migrants to Australia from German-speaking Switzerland reported in written life stories and subsequent life story interviews. The participants represent four family types and a wide age range, and…

In the postcolonial era, a cultural nationalist movement has sought to elevate the status of St. Lucia's creole vernacular, Kweyol, and with some success--it is now the most visible symbol of St. Lucian national identity. This relatively new development has altered somewhat the historic linguistic status quo between the official, high status…

The principal objective of this study was to investigate the long-term (35-36 years) effects of a K-3 bilingual-multicultural programme by studying the former Mexican-American participants and controls as adults in their 30s and 40s. The controls were enrolled in an English immersion programme and were matched to the experimental programme…

This paper explores how teachers' beliefs and practices create spaces for the contestation and innovation of bilingual intercultural education (BIE) policy, a policy of indigenous culture and language revitalization in Peru. Based on ethnographic research, there are two central arguments developed throughout this paper. First, the author argues…

In South Africa, as in many parts of postcolonial Africa, English dominates the political economy and as a result is the medium of instruction chosen by the majority of South African schools, despite the fact that most learners do not have the opportunity to acquire English to the levels necessary for effective engagement with the curriculum.…

The focus of this paper is the small postcolonial country of the Gambia. As in other parts of postcolonial Africa, English plays a major role in the education system. The paper reports on the conflicts and tensions which are evident when "vernacular" languages are used in the classroom. Although the study is based on substantial periods…

This paper focuses on codeswitching (CS) as a strategy employed by teachers in their EFL (English as a foreign language) classrooms in two commercial "bushibans" or "cram" schools in Taipei, Taiwan. More specifically, we are concerned with the perceived functions of CS in the EFL classroom context and the extent to which these…

The concept of "English only" as the best teaching-learning method in English as a foreign language classrooms has been promoted in Taiwan over the last decade. During that time, the concept has been queried and debated. Teachers and learners have come to realise that for beginners and slow language learners, the use of codeswitching in…

The ideology of monolingualism prevails throughout society, including within minority ethnic communities who are bilingual and multilingual. Some minority ethnic communities in Britain believe that the response to the dominance of English language is to replace it with other languages. Complementary schools--language and culture classes organised…

In this issue, aside from the introduction, there are six papers on classroom code-switching (CS), covering a wide spectrum of geographic and pedagogic contexts: two from Africa focussing on switching in content subject lessons; two from Taiwan looking at CS in EFL language subject classrooms; and two further papers, one looking at written CS and…

Drawing on Pennycook's frameworks for understanding the global role of English, we discuss the paradoxes of English language usage in what Canagarajah terms "periphery communities" internationally. This analysis is complemented by Canagarajah's work on a "politics of location", which provides powerful insights into a periphery…