This study explores how, using a multimodal approach to integrating language and content teaching, high school students with limited English proficiency can be supported to engage in rich, complex interpretations of literary works in English and to realize their interpretations linguistically in written academic discourse. Findings suggest that a…

This article presents a series of studies focusing on L2 production and processing of adjective-noun collocations (e.g., "social services"). In Study 1, 810 adjective-noun collocations were extracted from 31 essays written by Russian learners of English. About half of these collocations appeared frequently in the British National Corpus (BNC);…

This study investigated how listener experience (extent of previous exposure to non-native speech) and semantic context (degree and type of semantic information available) influence measures of intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness of non-native (L2) speech. Participants were 24 native English-speaking listeners, half experienced…

Intelligibility has been widely regarded as an appropriate goal for second language pronunciation teaching. Yet there is no universally accepted definition of intelligibility, nor any field-wide consensus on the best way to measure it. Further, there is little empirical evidence to suggest which pronunciation features are crucial for…

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the introduction in several countries of universal neonatal hearing screening programs has changed the landscape of education for deaf children. Due to the increasing provision of early intervention services for children identified with hearing loss, public education for deaf children often starts…

This study draws on sociocultural theory to explore how adult ESL learners interact with either a higher- or a lower-proficiency peer during pair problem solving, and how they each perceive the interactions with their partners. Three ESL learners engaged in a three-stage task: pair writing; pair noticing; and individual writing with two learners,…

This paper presents the results of a study on the use of a virtual reality (VR) world in a German language classroom. After participating in a lesson on the use of commands, students experienced the language and culture through navigation in a VR world. It is argued that this new medium allows for students to be immersed in the target culture and…

This study examines the effects of learners' production (i.e., pushed output) during a multi-stage reconstruction task on learners' noticing of Spanish past tense morphology, aural text comprehension, and development of preterite/imperfect usage in writing. Participants included 47 intermediate L2 Spanish learners in a content-based course at the…

The present study investigates the functions that language learners attribute to the first language (L1) within a teaching context that maximizes the target language (TL). Beginners of French in an Australian university (N = 52) completed a questionnaire consisting of 21 closed questions on their views on L1/TL use and two open questions on the…

This collaborative inquiry is based on university instructors' reflections on their experiences in negotiating and facilitating an international telecollaboration that connected their English as a second language and English as a foreign language students in Canada, Mexico, and Russia. The central themes that emerged from the instructors'…

The aggressive internationalization of Canadian universities and increased immigration to Canada over the past 20 years have resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of second language (L2) students in Canadian universities. However, little is known about the factors that influence academic acculturation of L2 students or about the role of…

The community is an important stakeholder in language education, and community views are critical for the successful implementation of new language policies. This article reports on a study on multilingual language policies conducted in two primary schools in two communities in eastern Uganda, one rural and one urban, from 2005 through 2006. The…

This article addresses two key challenges that globalization poses to literacy research: the need for new models of literacy and literacy education, and the stakes of adopting multiliteracies pedagogies in different contexts--that is, the tensions between competing hegemonic discourses of collective identity in the public sphere of ethnolinguistic…

At Joyce Public School (JPS) in the Greater Toronto Area, we are engaged in ongoing collaborative action research to develop pedagogical approaches to emergent literacies that engage multilingual, multicultural, and multimodal perspectives in complex interplay. Our research is grounded in the challenges children experience in acquiring literacy…

This article describes how minority language development and literacy activities were facilitated in a wartime context for Southern Sudanese language groups, particularly through the use of workshops. It also presents the voices of the language speakers themselves as they reflect on this process. A background discussion considers the importance of…