The notion of language proficiency in English Language Teaching (ELT), as an internationalized educational enterprise, has tended to be operationalized in terms of stable lexicogrammar and enduring normative patterns of social use. It will be argued that this 'established' stability has been challenged by the scholarship in several fields of…

This paper will deal, firstly, with the South African context, that cries out for attention to responsible language assessment. The renewed interest in language testing in South Africa is well illustrated in assessments of language ability for educational purposes generally, and more specifically in the assessment of academic literacy. Secondly,…

Born and educated in the UK, with Arab parents and Muslims, second-generation British-Arab immigrants in Cardiff find themselves at the core of a complex web of power relations which potentiates their production of multilingual practices. However, while Cardiff is officially bilingual, English being the dominant language and Welsh becoming…

The May 2013 Report of the High Level Panel, established by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2012 to advise on the global development framework beyond 2015 underscored that rising inequity is a growing worldwide concern. The high level panel refers to a study of 28 countries in Africa which found that more than one out of every three pupils…

In the early 1990s, the government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) enacted educational reform. It officially abandoned its English-only policy at elementary school level, in favour of community languages. In response, the Kairak community of East New Britain Province developed a vernacular literacy programme. This paper, based on original fieldwork…

The San are Southern Africa's first indigenous peoples. They can be found in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia. The San peoples in Botswana still face discrimination, especially in the education sector, as their indigenous literacy and way of life are largely ignored. Their languages are not part of the school curriculum in Botswana and…

Timor-Leste celebrated its formal political independence on 20th May 2002. The National Constitution of the new nation declared the endogenous lingua franca (Tetum) and the former colonial language (Portuguese) to be co-official. The remaining local languages were given the status of national languages. Indonesian and English were designated as…

This article considers the current debate in Australia into the learning of literacy and foreign languages. It examines not only the literacy levels attained by Australian students in their national language (English) in comparison to these in other countries, as well as between Australian states, but also theories involved in school learning and…

This monograph examines the language planning situation in Sri Lanka with particular emphasis on the planning of Sinhala as an official language of the country. It explores the historical, social, ideological and political processes, changes in language policy decisions, as well as the complexities of the language policy and planning situation in…

Debates about language and literacy in Uganda were renewed with publication in 1992 of a government white paper. Most likely this paper will conclude that the English language will continue to command the highest profile at the national level, with the local languages struggling, with diverse levels of success, to follow suit. (Contains 13…

Second-language and native-language methodologies are equally inappropriate as a foundation for the language training of cultural minorities. Second-language methodologies are based on the assumption that the language is to be acquired in school, as either a subject or a school activity. The relationship between teaching and learning is taken for…