Search

Background: Language discussions have historically focused on the power dynamics between dominant and indigenous languages. This has generated discontent and contention on which language should rule the educational sector. The national language policy of South Africa mandates the use of all languages in the educational system. Even though there are 12 recognised languages, English is preferred in education circles. This ignores the research that demonstrates the advantages of speaking one's native language, especially in the early years of schooling. Aim: This study was conducted to determine how preschool practitioners assist the language development of learners in multilingual classrooms. Setting: Six early childhood education (ECE) practitioners from three preschools in Mamelodi township, South Africa were selected, based on choosing English as the language of communication, in multilingual classrooms in peri-urban areas. Methods: A qualitative approach and a case study research design were employed. It focused on purposive sampling of practitioners from three preschools in Mamelodi where the medium of communication was English. Interviews, observations, casual conversations and document and visual data analysis were data collection tools. A questionnaire was used to gather the geographical information of the participants. A fusion of the Bakhtinian philosophy of dialogism and social justice theory underpinned the study. Results: The results showed that despite English in their schools as a medium of instruction, practitioners used predominating home languages to assure understanding. This translanguaging approach was commonly used in every school. Learning in a single language was challenging because of diverse languages, hence the use of English First Additional Language. Conclusion: To promote language acquisition in multilingual preschools, translanguaging ought to be promoted. Contribution: This study proposes that early childhood teacher preparation programs ought to promote multilingualism by employing translanguaging strategies as a study unit.

Languages differ in their realization of the subject argument: non-null-subject languages, like English, require subjects to be phonologically overt; rather, null-subject languages, like Greek, allow the subject to be overt or null. This cross-linguistic difference can lead to the transfer of grammatical properties across languages during bilingual language acquisition. The direction of crosslinguistic transfer is known to be affected by structural overlap and linguistic dominance. This exploratory study was conducted to establish whether structural overlap or linguistic dominance affect the production patterns of Greek children who acquire English at preschool. If structural overlap determines the direction of transfer, then children will overuse overt subjects in Greek; if dominance determines the direction of transfer, then children will overuse null subjects in English. Two groups of Greek children (between 3;6-4;5 and 4;6-5;8) attending a monolingual English immersion programme in Greece participated in a novel oral elicitation task that tested their use of null and overt subjects in both languages. Both groups produced significantly more null and fewer overt subjects in English than an English monolingual control group, but the same number of null and overt subjects in Greek as a Greek monolingual control group. This finding suggests that the preschoolers, who start learning English at 3;0 years, experience crosslinguistic transfer from Greek, their dominant language, to English -- thus highlighting the role that dominance plays in determining the direction of crosslinguistic transfer among successive bilingual children.

Despite the worldwide prevalence of multilingualism, the knowledge of the relationship between domain-general cognitive control and multilingual language control remains scant. Here we provide new insights into this issue by examining systematically how different components of inhibitory control (i.e., response inhibition and interference suppression) contribute to language control in multilingual populations with high L2 proficiency. To this end, 65 Tibetan-Chinese-English trilinguals highly proficient in L2 were recruited to complete three tasks: a picture-naming task measuring the performance of online trilingual speech production, and two nonlinguistic tasks, a go/no-go task and a Simon task, as proxies for measuring response inhibition and interference suppression abilities, respectively. Using mixed-effects modeling, we analyzed both the trilingual language switching/nonswitching performances and their correlations with these two components of inhibitory control. Our data revealed unexpected patterns of reversed language dominance effect and (a)symmetries in switch costs. Notably, interaction analysis revealed that while response inhibition was robustly engaged in trilingual language control, interference suppression did not appear to play a role. Taken together, our study suggests that, for trilingual speakers highly proficient in L2, the recruitment of different subprocesses of inhibitory control in lexical access was selective and was constrained to reactive and local-level language control. We conclude by discussing theoretical implications.

This article reports on two experiments that examine the computation of contrastive focus in Russian on the part of adult English-dominant heritage speakers and second language learners of Russian, in comparison with baseline monolinguals. The first experiment uses an acceptability judgment task to determine whether bilingual and monolingual speakers use both contextual and prosodic cues to determine the location of contrastive focus. A follow-up experiment uses two prominence detection tasks in order to separately examine participants' sensitivity to contextual vs. prosodic cues. The findings indicate that, at higher proficiency, bilingual speakers of Russian successfully use both contextual and prosodic cues to contrastive focus; with proficiency controlled for, heritage speakers do not have an advantage over second language learners in this domain. These findings are discussed in light of cross-linguistic influence and interface vulnerability.

Quantifier-Negation sentences allow an inverse scope reading in Tibetan but not in Chinese. This difference can be attributed to the underlying syntactic difference: the negation word can be raised at Logical Form in Tibetan but not in Chinese. This study investigated whether Chinese-dominant Tibetan heritage speakers know such difference. We conducted a sentence-picture matching truth value judgment task with 28 Chinese-dominant Tibetan heritage speakers, 25 baseline Tibetan speakers and 31 baseline Chinese speakers. Our baseline data first confirmed the difference between Tibetan and Chinese: the inverse scope reading is allowed in Tibetan but prohibited in Chinese. Our heritage participants' data showed a divergence: one group of heritage speakers allow the inverse scope reading in both Tibetan and Chinese while another group prohibit it in both languages. There is a third group of heritage speakers who are aware of the difference between Tibetan and Chinese. Our findings suggest that while it is possible for heritage speakers to attain nativelike knowledge of an interface phenomenon that differs in their two languages, they may also be subject to crosslinguistic influence and adopt one of two opposite strategies. Both strategies can minimize syntactic differences between their two grammars so an economy of syntactic representations in their repository of grammars can be achieved.

In this article, we discuss the significance of English in the internationalization of higher education and international student mobility, using Kachru's (1985) Three Circles Model of World English. As education is one of the major forms of migration (Liu-Farrer, 2022; Borlongan, 2023) in the so-called 'age of migration' (cf. de Haas, Castles, & Miller, 2020), more and more students are motivated to study abroad to complete their tertiary education. First, we discuss motivating factors both for the internationalization of higher education and international student mobility. Second, we point out how English has been playing a very central role in the internationalization of higher education institutions and international student mobility (Philipson, 2010; Jenkins, 2017) among these factors. Then, we present the dynamics of international student mobility by looking at their global flow, English-medium programs, and English language proficiency requirements. While Inner Circle countries are still the most attractive destinations for most international students, Expanding Circle countries, where English is not an institutionalized medium of instruction in higher education, also value English by expanding English-medium degree programs and requiring English proficiency test scores to admission. Finally, we end the article by reiterating the dominance and utility of English in the internationalization of higher education and international student mobility and its stable position as the language of educational migration.

Over the past decade, the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, as it relates to the speech and voice recognition industry, has established itself as a multibillion-dollar global market, but at whose expense? In this forum article, we amplify the current critiques of the architectures of large language models being used increasingly in daily life. Our commentary exposes emerging AI accent modification technology and services as agents of racial commodification and linguistic dominance, as it rests on the perceived superiority of standardized US English. We discuss our concern for such services leaching into academia. We argue that this technology follows a standardized language framework, which poses a fundamental problem of being informed by purist monolingual principles. These principles often help to perpetuate and maintain harmful raciolinguistic ideologies that result in language discrimination and the continual framing of the language practices of racially minoritized speakers as deficient. Thus, we write this piece with the intent to expose the fabricated humanity of accent modification technology whose existence perpetuates capitalism's reliance on dehumanization for economic advancement and the legacy and reproduction of white language superiority.

The study evaluated whether the direction (inhibitory or facilitative) of the phonological neighborhood density effect in English spoken word recognition was modulated by the relative strength of competitor activation (neighborhood type) in two groups of English-dominant learners of Spanish who differed in language experience. Classroom learners and heritage learners of Spanish identified spoken English words from dense (e.g., BEAR) and sparse (e.g., BOAT) phonological neighborhoods presented in moderate noise. The phonological neighborhood was separately manipulated at word onset (cohort) and word offset (rhyme). Classroom learners were overall slower in recognizing spoken words from denser neighborhoods. Strongly active (onset) neighbors exerted inhibitory effects in both classroom and heritage learners. Critically, weakly active (offset) neighbors exerted inhibitory effects in classroom learners but facilitative effects in heritage learners. The results suggest that the activation of both within and cross-language neighbors should be considered in determining the direction of neighbor effects in bilingual lexical processing.

This meta-synthesis study aims to reveal the types of bilingualism in Turkey by interpreting the quantitative data and findings obtained from studies on bilingualism types. In the light of the findings, 28 types of bilingualism and 5 classification criteria have been identified in the theses written on bilingualism in the "Turkish Higher Education Institution Thesis Center database". The synthesis data show that the most addressed type of bilingualism in 22 theses was "balanced" and "dominant bilingualism". The most frequently used criterion in classifying bilingualism is "skill level criterion", followed by "age of acquisition", "cognitive organization," and "status of the two languages".

This article aims to identify the ideologies of school-head teachers towards a mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) policy and analyse how these ideologies influence the implementation of MTB-MLE policy in schools in the context of Nepal. Adopting qualitative ethnographic research, two school-level policy arbiters (head teachers) were interviewed for the research data. Supplementary data were collected through telephone conversations. The data were discussed qualitatively, drawing upon Weinberg's (2021) role of microlevel policy arbiters in implementing MTB-MLE policy and three ideological frameworks by Bourdieu (1991): monolingual habitus, legitimate language, and symbolic power. Through the discussion of data, the article reveals that even though the MTB-MLE policy arbiters are well-informed about the value of MTB-MLE, they still seem reluctant to implement it. The policy arbiters are still implicitly or explicitly supporting monolingual or dominant language policy in education. The policy arbiters are influenced by the hegemony, globalization, and neoliberal ideologies of the English and Nepali languages. The article contradicts the coordination notion of Weinberg (2021) between policy arbiters; the issues of ideology seem to be stronger than the issue of coordination in MTB-MLE policy implementation.

This study investigates for the first time the comprehension of rhetorical questions (RhQs) in bilingual children. RhQs are non-canonical questions, as they are not used to request information, but to express the speaker's belief that the answer is already obvious. This special pragmatic meaning often arises by means of specific prosodic and lexical-syntactic cues. Being childhood learners, children have to acquire the concept of rhetoricity, but being bilinguals, they further need to acquire the different cues marking RhQs in their two languages. We tested 85 bilingual children (aged 6-9 years) with Italian as heritage language (HL) and German as majority language (ML) in both of their languages, using a forced-choice comprehension task. Our results show that RhQ comprehension improves with age in both languages. Bilingual children are able to exploit prosodic and syntactic cues to comprehend RhQs in their ML and HL with a slight advantage in the ML. This advantage could be either an effect of the cues used in the experiments in the two languages or of a higher proficiency in the ML. In addition, our results point to a later acquisition of prosodic rhetorical cues, which has implications for bilingual acquisition of non-canonicity in general.

The interaction between multilingualism and emotions has so far mostly been researched in Northern contexts. The findings obtained suggest that the first language is typically preferred for emotional and mental activities (i.e. 'first language primacy'). In this article, we extend this area of investigation to Africa. We use the Bilingualism and Emotions Questionnaire to probe first language primacy in South Africa, employing a novel analytical approach -- multiple correspondence analysis -- that allows us to examine the relationship between particular languages and their order of acquisition. Our findings, in part, do reflect favouring of the L1, but with two important qualifications. First, English is also widely used for emotional expression in non-intimate domains. Second, L1 isiXhosa speakers prefer English for mental calculations, and isiXhosa is generally not associated with positive emotional characteristics. We explain these trends in relation to the multilingual context of South Africa, which, like many postcolonial countries, uses a former colonial language extensively in formal institutional spaces.

This study attempts to explore the impact of ChatGPT on EFL learners' English writing and how this benefits from it. The three research objectives are to explore the reasons why EFL learners choose to use ChatGPT for their academic English writing, to examine how it affects EFL learners' academic English writing and define the challenges and opportunities for EFL learners using ChatGPT as an academic English writing tool. This study employed semi-structured and open-ended interviews to collect qualitative data. By thematic analysis, we found that EFL learners use ChatGPT for their academic English writing as it is convenient and caters to their needs. It also assists them since it scaffolds literacy in terms of writing fluency, content, and knowledge. Challenges for learners include: 1) possible academic plagiarism and a lack of critical thinking due to their over-reliance on the information provided by ChatGPT; 2) bias in English academic writing from the English-dominant context and pressure to pay; 3) considering and scrutinizing the authenticity of information generated in academic contexts. With its ease of use and undeniable efficiency, ChatGPT has emerged as a revolutionary tool in the realm of language learning and academic writing. However, English learners should be cautious and reflect on using this AI tool, especially for academic writing purposes.

Teachers play an essential role in fostering linguistic security in their classrooms. The aim of this study is to identify the language ideologies articulated by teachers in the Francophone schools of the English-dominant context of British Columbia (Canada) in order to explore how the different practices they implement to foster the use of French in their multilingual classrooms and foster linguistic security may interact and expose contradictions. The findings are based on a thematic analysis of interviews with twenty-one French-speaking high school teachers. I argue that linguistic ideologies provide a useful locus for studying the tensions produced by institutional policies and practices and the possible impact on the students' feelings of linguistic insecurity. Building on excerpts from the interviews, the findings indicate that the practices the teachers use to implement the French-language policy in their classrooms must be examined further as they might be harming the efforts they are making to increase linguistic security. This paper is intended to contribute to the ongoing conversation about the practical process of engaging with linguistic insecurity.

A substantial body of research has examined the role of English in South Africans' linguistic repertoires. Many of these studies have investigated whether a language shift towards English might be underway among first-language (L1) speakers of the indigenous languages. At the same time, the role of English in the repertoires of L1 English speakers has received little attention, the implicit assumption being that English remains dominant for them. This paper presents an empirically informed comparison of English experience within and across L1 and non-L1 (Ln) English speakers in order to shed light on the importance of English in these individuals' repertoires. Cluster analysis is employed to analyze language background data from bi-/multilinguals (n = 200). The analysis produces two clusters, which differ in extent of English exposure and preference for English use. All but one of the L1 English speakers belong to the 'higher exposure, higher preference' cluster, while the vast majority of the Ln speakers fall into the 'lower exposure, lower preference' cluster. The results indicate that English experience is relatively homogeneous across L1 speakers but differs, for the most part, across L1 and Ln speakers. The findings are relevant to our understanding of language use in multilingual South Africa.

In the vigorous trend of international publication as a crucial research performance indicator, English claims the status of the uncontested global language of academic publishing. In this study, after providing a sketch of the policies of writing and publishing in English in Iran (reflected in national policy documents and university bylaws), we probe the perspectives of nine Iranian higher education policy experts about these policies through semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that while policy documents indicate strong orientations in favor of publishing in English, the main justifications behind these policies appear to be vague ideas of demonstrating local academic capabilities and winning international reputation. However, the participants admit that ignoring the peculiarities of different academic fields and neglecting real-life research concerns while overemphasizing the number of research products are the main pitfalls of the policies. Their view of these problems and their suggested solutions indicate little consideration of the concern over the dominance of English in the world today. We discuss some aspects of this concern in relation to the neocolonial status of English in non-Anglophone countries where other languages and cultures can be overshadowed by a dominant so-called global academic lingua franca.

Assessing vocabulary knowledge is an important part of establishing language proficiency in bilingual children. The crosslinguistic lexical tasks (CLTs) provide a framework for testing vocabulary development in three-to-six year-olds using a standard procedure and comparable items for multiple languages. This study describes the development of the Irish CLTs to test receptive and expressive vocabulary for nouns and verbs. The test was then used in a pilot study to measure the vocabulary development in both Irish and English of 41 bilingual children attending Irish-immersion education in an Irish-speaking region of Ireland. The results showed that, as expected, children found lexical comprehension to be easier than production, and nouns easier than verbs. As a group, those from Irish dominant homes performed similarly on both the Irish and English versions of the CLTs, but those from bilingual and English-dominant homes performed significantly better on the English version. The amount of home-language exposure to Irish and English showed advantages on production tasks in each language. However, all groups performed relatively poorly on the production and comprehension of Irish verbs. We explore the findings in relation to the importance of language exposure in a minority language context.

This study investigated three key issues in heritage language (HL) research. Previous research shows HL speakers have an advantage on oral production tasks compared to L2 speakers who instead perform better on written tasks. Furthermore, both L2 and HL speakers are claimed to have a "yes-bias" towards retaining ungrammaticality in GJTs. Finally, the morphological domain has been shown to be as problematic for HL as L2 speakers but research in lesser-known languages is needed. Adult L1, L2, and HL speakers of Italian were compared on an oral priming task and timed GJT. Accuracy and response times were elicited from the latter test. The forms investigated were object and "si"-passive pronouns which lack corresponding forms in Swedish, the dominant language of the bilingual groups. Mixed effect regression was modelled to accuracy on the priming and GJT and response time data from the GJT. In contrast, a "d-prime" analysis was used to measure the degree of sensitivity to grammaticality and bias towards correct and incorrect answers in the GJT. Overall, the two bilingual groups performed quite similarly across the measures tested. All three groups show high sensitivity to grammaticality and a very similar bias for yes-answers on both grammatical and ungrammatical items.

Bilingual children demonstrate varying levels of proficiency in each of the two languages to which they are exposed. Even though it is widely acknowledged that bilingual children are not a homogenous group, existing studies on dual-language profiles in bilingual children have focused on expressive language profiles. In this study, we used the normative data from the Quick Interactive Language Screener: English-Spanish (QUILS:ES; de Villiers et al., 2021; Iglesias et al., 2021) and latent profile analysis to identify dual-language profiles in receptive language skills in a large sample of Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers. We also examined demographic, dual-language experience, and home literacy environment factors that contributed to receptive dual-language profile membership. The optimal model represents a three-profile solution, including a balanced-low profile, an English-dominant average profile, and a balanced-high profile. Comparing participants' profile membership against their age and risk status for language impairment based on the QUILS:ES screening results, we found that while being in an older age group significantly increases a child's likelihood of being in a balanced-high profile, an older child displaying a balanced-low profile is at a higher risk for language impairment. Age, socioeconomic status, and home literacy environment factors were found to be associated with strong dual-language skills, whereas (relative) dual-language experience did not predict profile membership. Together, these findings extend previous work that examined the heterogeneity within Spanish-English bilingual children by demonstrating substantial variability in their receptive language skills and providing insights into malleable factors that may be targeted to support dual-language development.

When researching socioscientific topics, particularly on the Internet, readers face multiple texts that they must integrate into a coherent mental model. Previous research in monolingual settings has found that comprehension is biased toward readers' prior beliefs (text-belief consistency effect). Considering that the Internet is multilingual, this experiment focused on the influence of document language on the text-belief consistency effect. Assuming differences in epistemic prestige among languages, we hypothesized that document language would act as a credibility cue and moderate the text-belief consistency effect. Seventy-four German university students read two conflicting texts either in their L2 English (higher epistemic prestige) or in their L1 German (lower epistemic prestige). Participants constructed stronger situation models for the belief-consistent text than for the belief-inconsistent text only when they read the texts in German. These results indicate that document language can act as a source characteristic that may reduce belief biases in comprehension.

English has become the main lingua franca for scientific dissemination. Its hegemony contrasts with the scarce presence of minority languages such as Basque in academic publications. Its presence, in addition to having a short trajectory, has not yet been studied. This paper aims to identify the reasons for publishing or not publishing in the Basque language. We carried out a study of the opinions of 301 researchers in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences. The opinions were analysed through a lexical analysis using the Reinert method. The results revealed that the reasons for not publishing in Basque were the ease of publishing in English or Spanish in contrast to the difficulty of publishing in Basque, the limited impact of journals in Basque, and the fact that the scientific community does not accord these journals sufficient value or recognition. However, the participants' reasons for publishing were a desire to create content for the Basque scientific community and a rootedness in the Basque identity itself. The results are of interest in the context of advancing the normalisation of the Basque language in the academic field.

This article investigates the language practices of a bilingual mariachi instructor teaching mariachi music to Latinx English dominant students. This ethnographic study draws on the concept of chronotope (Bakhtin 1981) to explore the spatiotemporal aspects of learning, particularly in terms of the teachers' selective use of language correction strategies when teaching students to sing mariachi music. I argue that the mariachi, its symbolism, and the lyrics are chronotopic because they come from an 'epic time' in Mexico and the image and ideology of the charro is currently a global symbol of Mexicanness. Analysis of data shows that when teaching mariachi lyrics specifically, the instructor chronotopically frames the pronunciation of the song lyrics as iconic and requiring specific forms of Spanish. Findings suggest that the instructor focuses on a mariachi identity that, while it does not require fluency in Spanish, does demand language to be used in a particular iconic way (i.e. Mexican accented Spanish) to evoke the past and perpetuate the symbolism of lo mexicano, which is vital to the identity formation of Mexican origin youth. This chronotopic lens allow us to explain why in heritage language learning spaces some linguistic changes can be accepted while others may be sanctioned.

This study explores English-dominant speakers' and English learners' knowledge of (in)formal stylistic variants, their choice of (in)formal styles in relation to social context, their preferences in the use of select (in)formal stylistic variants, and their beliefs about the influence of their other languages. Ten English-dominant undergraduates in Canada, 10 international English-as-a-second-language undergraduates in Canada, and 11 English-as-a-foreign-language undergraduates in Slovakia completed a questionnaire and composed 6 short e-mail messages, each embedded in a unique social context defined by the intended reader (ranging from completely unfamiliar to extremely familiar) and the communication purpose (ranging from completely transactional to completely interactional). Differences were found among the groups in their knowledge of (in)formal stylistic variants, their choice of style, their use of some (in)formal variants, and reported effects of their other languages. This study concludes that primarily classroom-instructed English learners who wish to learn how English-dominant speakers approach expression of formality would benefit from explicit instruction. It further concludes that more research is necessary to identify factors driving individual knowledge of (in)formal variants and preferences in their use, particularly in relation to overall communicative competence and the context of language acquisition and use.

The Welsh Government's Welsh language strategy, Cymraeg: A million Welsh speakers [Welsh Government. 2017a. "Cymraeg 2050: A Million Welsh Speakers." Cardiff: Welsh Government], aims to increase the numbers of Welsh speakers to one million by 2050. The creation of new Welsh speakers and immersion education form an integral part of the Welsh Government's language revitalisation strategy and this study revisits new Welsh speakers from the Rhymney Valley, South Wales in 2016/2017 a decade on from the 2006 research study [Hodges, R. 2009. "Welsh Language Use Among Young People in the Rhymney Valley." "Contemporary Wales" 22: 16-35. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/uwp/cowa/2009/00000022/00000001/art00004]. This longitudinal research provides further insights into their continuing language journeys, and indicates there has been a sustained reduction in this group's use of Welsh by 2016/2017 due to factors relating to fluency, confidence and a lack of opportunities to use Welsh. However, the results indicate that new speakers play an important role in influencing family language transmission and in increasing language awareness within the workplace. This paper calls for further longitudinal research on new Welsh speakers' language journeys so that this group may be appropriately supported as they make a crucial contribution to language revitalisation in Wales.

Investigations of working memory advantages in bilinguals yield inconsistent findings. Even less is known about how the addition of languages beyond two (multilingualism) may affect working memory. Due to their experience with managing multiple languages, it is possible that multilinguals may be more practised in the use of their working memories. This exploratory study investigated whether multilingualism in three or more languages contributes to working memory ability. Participants were South African multilinguals with good to excellent proficiency in English and two or more African languages. The study investigated the influence of balanced proficiency across the participants' languages, number of languages spoken, age of acquisition of additional languages, percentage exposure to each language, intelligence, gender and socioeconomic status on the components of working memory (verbal STM, verbal processing, visuospatial STM and visuospatial processing). Results suggest that the addition of a third language has a negative effect on visuospatial working memory, that modality (verbal or nonverbal) and type of working memory tests are influential and that nonverbal intelligence exerts the most consistent and largest influence. The results are interpreted within the context of the contention surrounding the existence of bilingual advantages in working memory, and debates concerning working memory structure in adults.

This study investigates the use of overt and null subjects in Bulgarian in child heritage speakers with L2 German. The alternation of overt and null pronominal subjects in null-subject languages like Bulgarian depends on grammatical and discourse conditions and contrasts with German. Oral narratives were elicited in Bulgarian, comparing the performance of the heritage children to that of monolingual children and adults. Overall 68 Bulgarian narratives of 39 speakers were analysed as to the use of overt and null pronominal subjects in topic-continuity and topic-shift contexts. The results reveal similar subject realisation for all speakers, supporting early acquisition of null-subject grammars. Analyses of topic-continuity and -shift contexts showed similar overall patterns in children's and adults' subject use, with children producing somewhat more overt subjects in topic-continuity and ambiguous overt pronouns in topic-shift contexts than adults. However, the bilinguals used significantly more ambiguous null subjects than monolinguals. These results suggest that fine-grained discourse constraints of null-subject grammars are more difficult for bilinguals to acquire and maintain. The near adult-like performance of the bilinguals in some contexts can be attributed to the fact that most of them were Bulgarian-dominant and received non-attrited parental input. Differences are also attributable to cross-linguistic influence.

Purpose: Typically developing (TD) bilingual children usually produce narratives with preserved macrostructure (i.e., narrative scheme) but with impaired microstructure (i.e., language complexity). As for monolingual and bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD), they usually produce narratives with both impaired macro- and microstructure. It is therefore difficult to differentiate TD from DLD, on the basis of narrative production, especially in bilingual children. In this study, we examine whether a dynamic assessment (DA) task of narratives, using a pretest-teaching-posttest design, can differentiate TD from DLD, without disadvantaging bilinguals over monolinguals. Method: We recruited 118 French-speaking children (M[subscript age] = 8;5 [years;months]), with one experimental condition in which children benefited from a teaching phase (30 TD, 18 monolinguals and 12 bilinguals; 30 DLD, 15 monolinguals and 15 bilinguals) and one control condition (58 TD, 31 monolinguals and 27 bilinguals), in which children participated in another activity. In the pre- and posttest, children were asked to tell a story based on a series of pictures. During the teaching phase, an examiner asked children 12 specific questions about the story, targeting macro- and microstructural elements. Scores were attributed to the number of macro- and microstructural elements correctly produced and to the number of specific trained elements (TE) that were produced as a result of training. Results: Scores improved on macrostructure and on the number of TE following teaching for all groups of the experimental condition (TD and DLD), whereas there was no progress in children of the control condition. TD participants and participants with DLD differed on all measures in both pre- and posttest, with no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals. Conclusions: Our dynamic task led to both improved narrative skills and TD/DLD differentiation, with bilinguals not being disadvantaged. Our study thus supports the existing literature indicating that DA can be used to diagnose narrative deficits in children with DLD.

Transnationals constitute one-third of the population of the economically prosperous Singapore. Applying a family language policy (FLP) framework and collaborative autoethnography from data (interviews, videos, and diaries) spanning 13 years, this study delves into the linguistic journey of an Italian-Chinese family with two children born in Singapore. The analysis demonstrates the dynamics of language ideologies, management, and practices, following changes in parental beliefs, children's linguistic proficiencies and agency, availability of resources within the family and the host country, and unexpected events like COVID-19. The article highlights how multilingual parents' ideologies shape up owning to individual experiences, beliefs, and aspirations, and how these ideologies are translated into language choices and day-to-day language maintenance, vis-à-vis Singapore's English-centric policies. This unique longitudinal case study also touches on features pertaining to transnational families in Singapore, such as the perception of the local variety 'Singlish,' caregiving, and schooling options, illustrating the intricate interplay of micro and macro factors governing family multilingualism.

In 2018/2019, the Government of Austria instituted a new language support model to Austrian schools that included segregated language support measures for non-fluent German-speaking students. The central research aim of the paper is to investigate how the implementation of this new language support model compares to the policy requirement by examining different models of implementation. In the framework of the initial phases of the project 'A multi-perspective study on German language support', 12 interviews with German language support teachers and school principals were conducted. Following a prototypical case study analysis, four models of implementation were identified: (1) Segregationmodel, (2) Mixed segregated and integrated model, (3) Individualized language support, and (4) Inclusive support model. Given that thisis the first study in Austria to show the concrete implementation models of German language support in schoolsFindings highlight important implications for school principals and educational policy makers.

While formal L3 morphosyntactic acquisition research has focused on the roles of the L1 versus L2 during the L3 initial stages, we examine their roles during development. Specifically, we explore whether the L3 (here, Portuguese) revision process after non-facilitative transfer differs whether the initial L3 representation reflects the L1 or L2. If this initial L3 representation is the same for a group whose source is their L1 and a group whose source is their L2, it is plausible to predict similar developmental processes between groups. However, recent data have shown between-group developmental differences despite a similar L3 starting point. In an effort to isolate the variable(s) behind such differences, we investigate the roles of dominance and formal instruction via two sets of L3 morphosyntactic judgments. The first set excludes dominance, with similar patterns in English-dominant versus Spanish-dominant L1 Spanish data. The second set excludes formal instruction, whereby L2 Spanish data shows L3 convergence for a property not explicitly taught and L1 Spanish data does not. As an initial hypothesis for further exploration of between-group differences, we propose the Cumulative Input Threshold Hypothesis: The rate of developmental recovery from non-facilitative transfer is inversely related to lifetime input of the source language.

This ethnographic study utilized border theory to examine how a bilingual Latinx teacher created equitable instruction for Mexican immigrant second-graders in a 50-50 dual-language (DL) classroom in the U.S. Midwest. Approximately half the students in the DL classroom came from Spanish-speaking, working-class homes, and half from English-speaking, middle-class homes. The teacher reduced linguistic borders when she drew from her personal experiences and knowledge of bilingualism to forbid linguistic discrimination, separated students' second-language mastery from their conceptual understanding, and facilitated translanguaging (bilingual individuals' use of integrated linguistic resources). She promoted class border crossings when she intentionally grouped students and told the English-dominant students that they were disrespecting their Spanish-dominant classmates when they refused to speak Spanish. Borders that the teacher could not change were the high status of English at the school and the English-dominant students' expectation that the Spanish-dominant students would help them with their Spanish but that they did not have to reciprocate. Educational implications included training DL teachers so that they know how to reduce the privileges of the English speakers and how to support translanguaging. A call for more classroom research to address the power dynamics between language-minority and majority students in DL classrooms was made.

Despite an increasing number of children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds living in South Korea, their languages have not received sufficient attention in Korean schools and society. This article aims to identify the language ideologies operating in Korea by examining the ways languages are situated in multicultural research and practices. To present the background of the study, the author reviews the demographic complexity of the culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) populations in terms of language and ethnicity. Then, by examining multicultural research and policies regarding use and education of diverse languages in Korea, the author argues that three interrelated language ideologies (language stratification, double standards in multilingual education, and deficit and remedial paradigms towards multilinguals) underlie Korean multicultural education, supporting monolingualism rather than multilingualism. The article highlights the discrimination and inequity that minoritized students encounter when their languages are not considered cultural capital or a valued part of their identities. Then, the author offers the following suggestions for redesigning multicultural education in Korea: providing institutional support for multilingual teachers, integrating critical multilingualism in teacher education, and implementing translanguaging practices in language classrooms.

This paper proposes a concept of "campus vitality" of languages: the ability of a language to maintain its prestige, visibility and continuity on university campuses. A seven-factor framework is developed for on-the-ground investigation of the relevant languages in a given campus context. These indexical factors are the number, distribution, and proportion of users; usage and visibility in campus domains; and institutional and user attitudes toward the languages. The application of this framework in a second-tier university in China reveals some sociolinguistic information: the presence of more languages on campus does not necessarily increase students' diversity experiences; English supremacy in higher education in China is posing a threat to the status of the national language in the academic domain, an issue that has drawn administrative attention from the government; a more balanced ecology is not only desirable but also achievable if the seven-factor framework is followed by government and by university management.

Many students learn Turkish as a second language in Turkey. These students, whose first language is Kurdish, learn Turkish at a certain level before starting school. As a result, these students become emergent bilinguals along with school life. On the other hand, some of these students almost do not use Kurdish in their lives and wholly turn to Turkish. Ultimately, all students whose first language is Kurdish continue their education in the same environment with students whose first language is Turkish. As a result, these children lag behind students whose first language is Turkish in many respects. They even lag behind students whose dominant language is Turkish and Kurdish as their first language. This research it is aimed to reveal the differences between the two student groups in the context of written expression skills. The effect of the dominant language difference, preschool education status and socioeconomic level on the written expression skills of primary school students were examined. The research group of 428 primary school fourth-grade students (girl: 201, boy: 227) was determined by criterion sampling method. As a result of the research, it was revealed that the written expression skills of the students whose dominant language is Kurdish remained at a deficient level, and they made more spelling mistakes.

Heritage language (HL) speakers seem to diverge from monolingual speakers in the acquisition of syntax-discourse interface phenomena. However, most of the studies reporting this finding do not make any distinction between different types of syntax-discourse interface structures. Therefore, it is an open question whether these structures are difficult for HL speakers across the board or whether different types of structures are associated with different acquisition outcomes. In this study, we investigate whether the timing of the acquisition of syntax-discourse interface structures among monolingual children affects their acquisition by HL children. We consider the acquisition of the alternation between preverbal and postverbal subjects with unaccusative, unergative and transitive verbs in Italian. This alternation involves the syntax-discourse interface across all verb types. However, mastery of this alternation has a different timing in monolingual acquisition depending on the verb type: it emerges earlier in association with unaccusative verbs than unergative and transitive ones. We elicit narratives in Italian from 42 Italian heritage children living in Germany and ranging in age from 7 to 14 years. We focus on the analysis of preverbal and postverbal subjects, considering the effect of verb type and discourse status of the subject. The children show a good mastery of the alternation between preverbal and postverbal subjects with unaccusative verbs, whereas they exhibit difficulties with the same alternation in association with transitive and unergative verbs. Furthermore, postverbal subjects with transitive verbs are particularly vulnerable to cross-linguistic effects from German. The results of the study suggest a gradient interpretation of heritage speakers' difficulty with syntax-discourse interface structures, with timing in monolingual acquisition being a relevant factor that modulates the degree of this difficulty. The results are not affected by children's dominance of exposure to Italian or age.

Measuring language dominance, broadly defined as the relative strength of each of a bilingual's two languages, remains a crucial methodological issue in bilingualism research. While various methods have been proposed, the Bilingual Language Profile (BLP) has been one of the most widely used tools for measuring language dominance. While previous studies have begun to establish its validity, the BLP has yet to be systematically evaluated with respect to reliability. Addressing this methodological gap, the current study examines the reliability of the BLP, employing a test-retest methodology with a large (N = 248), varied sample of Spanish-English bilinguals. Analysis focuses on the test-retest reliability of the overall dominance score, the dominant and non-dominant global language scores, and the subcomponent scores. The results demonstrate that the language dominance score produced by the BLP shows "excellent" levels of test-retest reliability. In addition, while some differences were found between the reliability of global language scores for the dominant and non-dominant languages, and for the different subcomponent scores, all components of the BLP display strong reliability. Taken as a whole, this study provides evidence for the reliability of BLP as a measure of bilingual language dominance.

Heritage language (HL) bilinguals' writing skills has been a topic of inquiry in the field of HL education. However, little is still known about HL writers' writing processes and the contribution of individual differences to these processes remains unexplored. By integrating keystroke-logging and think-aloud methodologies, this study examined 61 Spanish-English HL writers' pausing and revision behaviors during the completion of Spanish (HL) and English writing tasks. Participants also completed an advanced Ospan working memory test and a language dominance questionnaire. The main findings revealed that, although HL writers' pausing and revision behaviors did not significantly differ between writing tasks, the nature of their writing processes underlying these writing behaviors fluctuated. Further, language dominance as a multidimensional construct did not contribute to these writing results, whereas participants with higher working memory spent more time addressing orthographic and morphosyntactic encoding episodes during pauses within words when writing in both languages.

While monolingual English speakers acquire most pronouns by age 5, acquisition amid prevalent, normative code-mixing, such as in Trinidad, is underexplored. This study examines how Trinidadian 3- to 5-year-olds express third-person subject, object, reflexive and possessive pronouns and factors influencing pronoun choices. Seventy-five preschoolers produced pronouns via a word elicitation task conducted in Trinidadian English Creole and Trinidad and Tobago English. Responses were coded for children's age, gender, district and socioeconomic status; task language; grammatical gender/number; and response form. Conditional inference trees facilitated statistical analysis. When choices were available, children exhibited variable production, with Creole forms often dominant. Grammatical gender influenced whether English or Creole pronouns were selected. Task language influenced possessive pronoun choices, indicating developing sociolinguistic competence. The non-significance of other variables suggests widespread mixing of English and Creole pronouns. Findings underscore the importance of describing understudied populations, especially where variation is inherent, to ensure accurate language assessment.

Home Language Surveys (HLS) are widely used by states as an initial screening tool to determine whether students should receive English as a Second Language (ESL) services. Parents/guardians are asked to complete the surveys when enrolling a student into a school. We collected surveys from the 50 states and the District of Columbia. We completed them as if we were the parent/guardian of six use-case students. Research questions were (1) How do HLS vary from state to state, if at all? What kinds of questions do they ask? (2) How do HLS across the 50 states and the District of Columbia identify, or not, six fictitious students for further ESL screening? We found that states and U.S. Department of Education-approved HLS questions identified students differently due to unclear questions, such as asking bilingual families to name one dominant language. We recommend additional validation measures be taken with survey questions.

The present study examined the roles that language of assessment, language dominance, and teacher language use during instruction play in Dual Language Learner (DLL) science scores. A total of 255 Head Start DLL children were assessed on equated science assessments in English and Spanish. First overall differences between the two languages were examined, then associations between performance on science assessments were compared and related to children's language dominance, teacher quantity of English and Spanish, and teachers' academic science language. When examined as a homogeneous group, DLLs did not perform differently on English or Spanish science assessments. However, when examined heterogeneously, Spanish-dominant DLLs performed better on Spanish science assessments. The percentage of English and Spanish used by teachers did not affect children's science scores. Teachers' use of Spanish academic science language impacted children's performance on science assessments, but English did not. The results have implications for the assessment of DLLs and teacher language use during instruction.

The "language pyramid" in the post-colonial territories as propounded by Melchers and Shaw in 2003 aptly reflects on the status of different languages in Pakistan. At the top is English, with its heritage as a colonial language. Then is the "national" language Urdu which has nationalist value and is spoken by the majority as a lingua franca; while at the bottom of this hierarchy are the regional languages and their dialects. This hierarchy of languages has deeper repercussions enrooting stratification based on social class and commodification of languages. In this paper, this claim is substantiated by semiotic analysis of a social media text- an amateur video clip that went viral on Facebook in January 2021 in which owners of a high-end cafe in Islamabad mock their manager's English. The video is only the tip of the iceberg of the symbolic and linguistic capitals of English in Pakistan. This analysis is further pleaded by the literature on the critical approach to language policy and planning (LPP). This critical approach can be traced back to the 1980s and Tollefson's oft-cited book in 1991 that endeavors to situate LPP as a part of ongoing conflicts between the elites and the common masses. He regards that the evolution of the critical approach has widened its scope rendering it primarily sociocultural, dealing with the dynamics of status and prestige. Thus stated, this research attempts to converge the critical relational theory of Bourdieu with semiotics to address this issue of class discrimination based on the hegemony of English in Pakistan through a multimethodological approach.

This study investigated the influence of phonological word representations from both first language (L1) and second language (L2) on third language (L3) lexical learning in L1-dominant Spanish-English bilinguals. More specifically, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to determine whether L1 Spanish and L2 English phonology modulates bilinguals' brain response to newly learned L3 Slovak words, some of which had substantial phonological overlap with either L1 or L2 words (interlingual homophones) in comparison to matched control words with little or no phonological overlap. ERPs were recorded from a group of 20 Spanish-English bilinguals in response to 120 auditory Slovak words, both before and after a three-day-long learning period during which they associated the L3 Slovak novel words with their L1 Spanish translations. Behaviorally, both L1 Spanish and L2 English homophony facilitated the learning of L3 Slovak words in a similar manner. In contrast, the electrophysiological results of the post-training ERPs, but not the pre-training ERPs, showed an N100 effect for L2 English interlingual homophones and opposite N400 effects for L1 Spanish and L2 English interlingual homophones in comparison to control words. These findings suggest different neurocognitive mechanisms in the use of L1 and L2 phonological information when learning novel words in an L3.