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The notion of "Micro-Learning" (ML) has been repeatedly accented as a successful learning approach in different learning phenomena. Despite these optimistic emphases, several studies lack a theoretical grounding in adoption of ML, thus missing a shared perspective of the education community. The scarce theoretical justification for understanding the nuanced dynamics of ML restricts the practical use of this pedagogical approach in "Second Language" (L2) instruction. Therefore, this paper seeks to fill the gap by proposing a theoretical model of ML for L2 instruction. First, a brief background on ML is provided evaluating its benefits and pitfalls in general teaching and learning enterprise. Second, three established theories are explicitly discussed based on a careful examination of the conceptual characteristics and empirical observations of ML. A theoretical model of ML is then devised based on relations postulated among proposed theories and application of the model to existing L2 MLs is made explicit. Finally, implications for research and practice are discussed to offer a more robust and descriptive picture of how ML can promote L2 teaching and learning across different contexts. Drawing from these theoretical insights, a principled way to integrating ML into L2 instruction can be made available for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper targets the aim of 'strengthening the students' multilingualism' in a second language subject in Sweden, Swedish as a second language (SSL), which represents a relatively rare L2 design internationally. The study investigates how ideological space for multilingualism with regard to this aim opens implementational space at the classroom level [Hornberger. 2002. "Multilingual Language Policies and the Continua of Biliteracy: An Ecological Approach." Language Policy 1 (1): 27–51]. We draw on ethnographic fieldwork in three linguistically diverse upper secondary schools in Sweden, where SSL is a parallel subject to Swedish, free of choice, and is taught by qualified teachers. Ideological and implementational space was found to be primarily for empowering students and valorizing their multilingualism and less for learning functions and pedagogical multilingual practices. Some students emphasized multilingual aspects as being empowering and as a reason for choosing SSL, indexing the performative function [Fairclough. 2014. "Semiotic Aspects of Social Transformation and Learning." In The Discourse Studies Reader. Main Currents in Theory and Analysis, edited by Johannes Angermuller, Dominique Maingueneau, and Ruth Wodak, 378–387. Amsterdam: John Benjamins] of macro-level policy in combination with teacher agency. We argue that in spite of the brevity of the formulated multilingual macro policy and its restricted 'potential space' [Johnson 2011. "Implementational and Ideological Spaces in Bilingual Education Language Policy, Practice, and Research." In Bilingual Education and Bilingualism: Educational Linguistics in Practice: Applying the Local Globally and the Global Locally, edited by Frances M. Hult and Kendall A. King, 126–139. Bristol, GBR: Multilingual Matters], it still had a significant bearing at the local level. This finding reinforces the importance of researching established macro-multilingual policies in situ in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to outline the teacher's role in classroom tandem. Classroom tandem is a student-centred model of language learning and instruction; there is a need for more knowledge about the teacher's role in a tandem classroom. Tandem learning, based on a social-interactional view of second language learning, requires that two students with different first languages cooperate in dyads. They switch languages and, in turns, act as learners in their respective second languages as well as models and support in their first languages. The empirical data consist of video recordings of teacher–student interactions in tandem classrooms in a bilingual, upper-secondary school campus. The analysis focuses on situations, where teachers interact with individual tandem dyads. We identify how teachers orient to different aspects of the tandem dyads' cooperation and language knowledge. Based on the analyses, we outline different roles of a tandem teacher. In addition to a facilitator role that is common for teachers in all school subjects today, tandem teachers act as language experts, as in all language instruction. The role of the teacher specific to classroom tandem entails coaching students in their roles as language resources and second language learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper describes a language learning model that applies social media to foster contextualized and connected language learning in communities. The model emphasizes weaving together different forms of language learning activities that take place in different learning contexts to achieve seamless language learning. it promotes social interactions with social media about the learners' day-to-day life using the targeted second or foreign language. The paper first identifies three key features of the language learning approach, namely, authenticity, contextualization and socialization. How these features are related to the communicative approach of language learning are subsequently explicated. This is followed by further explication on how the notion of seamless language learning could inform learning designers and learners in synergizing the desired characteristics of language learning together. Eventually, we propose the SMILLA (Social Media as Language Learning Artifacts) Framework to operationalize seamless language learning with the use of social media. A case of seamless language learning environment design known as MyCLoUd will be described to illustrate the practicality of the SMILLA Framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Audiovisual comprehension activities are complex, especially in a foreign language. On the one hand, there is a confict of visual attention between viewing a video and completing a written task simultaneously. On the other hand, paying attention to the image, the audio, and the activity at the same time can lead to working memory overload. This paper describes an innovative proposal that can help limit this complexity in the felds of teaching and testing second languages: the use of embedded comprehension questions in the form of subtitles and synchronized with the relevant fragments. The proposal is a result of a doctoral dissertation in which a multiphase mixed methods design was employed. Participants were researchers in teaching Spanish as a Second Language (SSL), Spanish linguistics and/or the use of educational technologies, and SSL university teachers and students. Overall, informants had positive opinions about this methodology. Quasi-experimental studies revealed that imprinted questions did not have a statistically signifcant efect on SSL students' audiovisual comprehension test performance. However, imprinted questions did increase the amount of time that test-takers watched the video in a statistically signifcant way. The latter suggests that this technique reduces the confict of visual attention between viewing the video and completing the task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• GTAs, while not considered teachers in scholarly or institutional discourses, teach countless students. • GTAs experience institutional and pedagogical tensions while inhabiting a role of both teacher and student. • GTAs navigate tensions as they form their own teacher identity. • These tensions are sites of struggle wherein a GTA may engage in agentive action. • GTAs react to institutional authoritative discourses and form their own internally persuasive discourse(s) in response. This paper reports on a qualitative case study of an often-overlooked language teacher: The graduate teaching assistant (GTA). The study relies on the theoretical premise that teachers' professional learning is a process of identity construction. During this process, teachers experience tensions as they are introduced to professional authoritative discourses (ADs) and negotiate internally persuasive discourses (IPDs). In the qualitative case study of Karina, a GTA at a US University (State University, henceforth), we address the research question: How did Karina navigate her identity tensions as a GTA in the German program at State University? Our findings detail the effect of authoritative discourses in the program, and a GTA's agency in developing her own IPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Providing examples is part of the daily routine that classroom teachers carry out in the course of their lessons, and yet we rarely examine how examples are produced and what kinds of work they do in the lively context of classroom interaction. The present study inquires into how instructional examples are portrayed in prior literature by educational psychologists and brings out what can not be seen through their cognitively oriented research. Following ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, this paper proposes that providing examples is a practical and interactional task enacted within witnessable details of classroom interaction. The second part of the paper provides analyses of talk exchanges taken from college ESL classrooms to demonstrate how instructional examples are part of developing sequences of discourse-in-interaction and how they pull into view an array of competent practices of teaching in and as the teachers’ communicative actions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper argues that writing should play a more prominent role in classroom-based studies of second language acquisition. It contends that an implicit emphasis on spoken language is the result of the historical development of the field of applied linguistics and parent disciplines of structuralist linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and child language development. Although writing as a communicative modality has been marginalized, it is key to understanding second language acquisition in contexts such as elementary and secondary level content area classrooms where literacy plays a central role in communication and transmission of subject matter. In all, the paper argues that while it is important for classroom-based studies to investigate how students learn how to write in a second language, it is equally important to learn how students learn a second language through writing. Implications of this perspective are noted for notions of learner and target language variation, multimodality and language socialization, and interactionist approaches to classroom research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Courses in cross-cultural communication and in "foreign" languages, in Australian universities at least, often fail to communicate across institutional and disciplinary barriers. Starting from an analysis of two courses in intercultural communication, this paper examines how they foreground cultural difference and where they locate it in relation to the classroom. This analysis raises a number of issues of relevance to the teaching of culture within "language courses." The affordances of this interdisciplinary approach are explored with particular reference to the teaching of French. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes several reasons for the difficulty non-native speakers of English have in acquiring the English article system and reviews five pedagogical methods for teaching the article system. The notion of information structure, specifically givenness, is then applied to a sample text to examine the extent to which canonical information structure (i.e. given information first, new information last) is obeyed. Given information was found to adhere to canonical structure most of the time, whereas new information adhered to it only half of the time, though within a narrow range of exceptions. The results of a pilot study in which one group of non-native English speakers is taught the article system using information structure as an overarching framework, another is taught using a traditional explanation of article use, and a third receives no instruction show that the group taught with the information structure framework made small but noticeable improvement compared to the other two groups. The suggested pedagogical application is for language teachers to present canonical information structure as a preliminary guess in determining the appropriate article for any noun, providing a further potential aid in learning the article system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• SSL may be associated with negative societal discourses on immigration and L2 use. • The pedagogical affordances of SSL are interpreted as reasons for continuing in SSL. • The importance of considering local educational contexts and ideologies is emphasized. This paper explores the relatively unique educational design of the school subject Swedish as a second language (SSL) through ethnographic fieldwork in three linguistically diverse schools in Sweden. A main point is the importance of carefully considering the local educational context in relation to its organizational design and embeddedness in language ideologies and linguistic hierarchies when researching and discussing educational practices designed for linguistically and culturally diverse students. Since L2 education 2 2 The term second language (L2) is used throughout the article in accordance with the terminology of the language education policy in Sweden. may become part of a negative social categorization of students (e.g. Talmy, 2011), we focus on student perspectives, i.e. 15 students' narrated experiences of SSL in upper secondary schools where SSL is a voluntary subject 3 3 Students must, however, choose between one of the two parallel subjects Swedish or Swedish as a second language. and the teachers are highly qualified. On the basis of stance analysis (Du Bois, 2007; Jaffe, 2009), we discuss both the students' motives for choosing SSL and their reasons for continuing to study SSL. Findings show an ambivalence toward the subject, which is related to conflicting discourses surrounding it (Hedman & Magnusson, 2018). On the one hand, the narratives reflect that SSL may be associated with negative societal discourses on immigration and L2 use; on the other, they provide examples of affordances of SSL, i.e. counter images to these discourses (cf. c ontrastive insights , Hymes, 1996). Not least, pedagogical scaffolding of advanced content was analyzed as a main reward. The fact that attending SSL in these schools was not an exception, separating a few from the majority, also allows for a problematization of "mainstream". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]