This paper explores headteachers' and teachers' perceptions of foreign languages(FL) and cultural learning in three primary schools in areas of disadvantage in England. Drawing upon a new theoretical frame for primary languages, Critical Cosmopolitanism (Delanty, 2006; Beck and Sznaider, 2006) and The Grammar of Culture (Holliday, 2018), we argue…

There has been a rapid global expansion of English instruction in the early grades in public school curricula. Particularly in so-called developing countries, the increase of and its shift from exclusively private to public education is linked to the idea that acquiring English promotes personal, social, and economic development. The author takes…

In this article we explore how primary school learners of English in Germany engage with examples of English that they were asked to locate in their local environments (their linguistic landscapes, LLs). In association with each located image, the learners completed a standardised worksheet in German that asked for brief written comments about its…

Around the world, the popularity of English has escalated, particularly at the primary school level (Butler, 2015), yet provision of sufficient qualified teacher expertise to meet demand continues to be inadequate. The OECD report on Equity and Quality in Education reports that: "The highest performing education systems are those that combine…

This contribution presents the preliminary findings from the TEPS study ("Teaching English in Primary Schools"). The study is situated in Germany where primary foreign language (FL) education has been compulsory since 2004, with pupils beginning FL education -- mostly English as a FL (EFL) -- in either year 1 or 3. Generally, this…

Language teaching and learning is commonly considered as a research discipline that resides within the field of 'applied linguistics', at least in the way the field is conceptualized by English-speaking academia. However, if we consider language teaching and learning as practice, this fit is not as neat as it at first might appear. Teaching,…

In the ten years since the Modern Language Association published their report, "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" (2007) dissatisfaction with the "two-tiered configuration" of US foreign language departments has become increasingly vocal. While the target of the criticism is often the…

This article reveals how center-periphery relations have unfolded, over time, in language policy processes in one nation--Timor-Leste--on the global periphery. We take a "longue durée" perspective on the language policy processes at work in this historical context, showing how different regimes of language were imposed, in the past, by…

This paper surveys the research methods and approaches used in the multidisciplinary field of applied language studies or language education over the last fourty years. Drawing on insights gained in psycho- and sociolinguistics, educational linguistics and linguistic anthropology with regard to language and culture, it is organized around five…

From a disciplinary discourse perspective, all university courses can be said to involve content and language integrated learning (CLIL) even in monolingual settings. Clearly, however, things become much more complex when two or more languages are involved in teaching and learning. The aim of this paper is to introduce readers to the linguistic…

What do students and teachers believe about the second language learning process? What if these beliefs are in conflict with each other or with prevailing applied linguistic theories? These are the types of questions that are investigated within folk linguistic research. Some researchers have taken a quantitative approach that relied on…

This paper reports the results of a quasi-experimental effects-of-instruction study examining the efficacy of applying a Cognitive Linguistic (CL) approach to L2 learning of the semantics of English modals. In spite of their frequency in typical input, modal verbs present L2 learners with difficulties, party due to their inherent…

This paper presents a series of experiments that tested the usefulness of teaching Spanish mood using an approach to Cognitive Grammar specifically developed for the foreign language classroom: "Operational Grammar." Mood selection is one of the most difficult aspects of learning Spanish as a FL, and it is one of the last features…

The pace at which new words are acquired is influenced by the degree of engagement with them on the part of the learner. Insights from cognitive linguistics into the non-arbitrary aspects of vocabulary can be turned into stimuli for such engagement. The majority of Cognitive Linguists' proposals for vocabulary teaching aim at helping learners…

"Constructions" are the central unit of grammatical analysis in cognitive linguistics. In formal linguistics "construction" referred to forms that were projected from lexical items rather than from an autonomous syntax. Thus, an expression, "I danced the night away" requires an intransitive verb in a transitive construction provided "away" is…