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Embedded in a Systemic Functional understanding of education as an initiation into knowledge structures and specific activities, both of which are fundamentally mediated by language, this paper addresses one of the critical concerns around CLIL: a possible mismatch between students' cognitive level and their L2 proficiency. The focus is on acts of classifying, comparing and contrasting facts, objects, phenomena, abstract ideas and concepts. Such cognitive and verbal actions are key in the construction of specialist knowledge, having been bundled in an umbrella cognitive discourse function (CDF) categorize. To operationalize this CDF, we develop a conceptual map through an exploratory, data-driven analysis of an oral learner corpus in L2 English and L1 Spanish on science and history topics collected in primary bilingual schools in Madrid. We also use SFL tools to examine lexico-grammatical choices which students employ to realize categorize across the two subjects and languages. The analysis shows that students encounter a range of difficulties, both conceptual and linguistic, when forming complete and appropriate categorizations in both languages. The results obtained across subjects reveal clear subject-specific tendencies in how categorizing is carried out: comparing seems to be a defining figure of thought in history while classifications were predominant in science.

Apart from linguistic diversity and multilingualism, empirical research into diversity is only in its beginnings in the Austrian educational context. CLIL research, on the other hand, is well-established but has not tended to focus on pedagogical practices. This study explores teachers' and students' self-reported experiences in Austrian CLIL classrooms with regard to the phenomenon of diversity and the pedagogical practices addressing it. This mixed-methods study used the research instruments (questionnaires, interview guides) developed in the ADiBE project. Three Viennese secondary schools with two classes each participated in the study. In total, 132 students answered the questionnaires. Six focus group interviews with 6-8 participants were conducted (one for each participating class). Teacher questionnaires were distributed in but also beyond the participating schools (N = 30), and eight teachers from the participating schools were interviewed. With regard to the phenomenon of diversity as such, our results suggest a system-inherent ambivalence between segregation and egalitarianism. Concerning pedagogical practices during CLIL lessons, such as language scaffolding, learner-centred design or use of German, the responses of students and teachers show that different aspects of classroom reality carry different weight with the two groups of participants.

Research on L2 collaborative writing (CW), where learners work together to co-construct a single text, has received increased attention in the last decades. Studies with adult learners have shown that collaboration benefits learners’ written products in terms of quantitative measures of accuracy and, more rarely, complexity and fluency (CAF) as well as qualitative global ratings. Additionally, research has shown that when adult learners work in pairs, they generate and resolve correctly a large number of language-related episodes (LREs). However, little is known as to whether CW benefits the writing performance of secondary school EFL learners, and to what extent these learners are able to produce and resolve LREs correctly. To address these two gaps, the present study compared the writing performance of 96 adolescent learners in Kosovo, assigned to work in pairs (n = 32) or individually (n = 32), and analysed the LREs produced by the pairs. The results suggest that pairs produced better texts in terms of CAF as well as overall text quality. Pairs also generated and resolved correctly a large proportion of LREs. In light of these findings, the use of CW is established as a viable pedagogic tool in the teaching of L2 writing with adolescent EFL learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This overview of seven years of research on language learning and teaching in Austria reflects a period of steady growth for the language teaching and learning research community, a development due to a national policy agenda aiming for a stronger research base in teacher education. The target languages of the teaching and learning processes investigated are primarily German, English, French, Italian, Spanish as well as several Slavic languages, reflecting the geographical, sociolinguistic and language policy situation of this increasingly multilingual country. This multilingualism means there are clearly many more first languages (L1s) than only German involved in the learning situations investigated. While all the studies reviewed here illustrate research driven by a combination of local and global concerns in connection with different theoretical frameworks, some specific clusters of research interest emerge. These are: societal and individual multilingualism, language education policy, language teacher education, language(s) in other subjects, early language learning, language acquisition and learning, literature and culture, testing and standardisation, digital media, and teaching materials.

Current research on the in-class discursive realities in English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) classrooms has been mostly restricted to whole class scenarios, whereas student-student interactive discourse in task-based activities is largely ignored. This study explores peer interactions among university students in an EMI marketing course in China, specifically focusing on repair practices. The data mainly comprised transcribed recordings of 26 peer interactions during two types of tasks, i.e. topic discussions and simulations. Findings reveal that the task type plays an important role in how various trouble sources are addressed. In both task types, there is a dominance of factual repairables, which are addressed through various collaboratively constructed repair trajectories. However, the relatively informal yet concept-related topic discussions elicit more frequent repair in general and linguistic-form related repair in particular than the relatively formal but hands-on natured simulations, though the latter type of task leads to more procedural and processing-related repairs. Implications are discussed regarding the importance of raising teachers' awareness that different activities hold different language and content learning opportunities in peer interactions in EMI classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue including immersion teaching, foreign language teaching and teacher professional development.