The Appraisal Theory includes three subsystems of evaluation; Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation. This study focuses on Graduation subsystem which is used by writers to amplify or diminish the scope of these two subsystems. It consists of Focus and Force options. Focus expressions are usually non-gradable they tend to sharpen or soften the…

Drawing on Lave and Wenger's (1991) and Wenger's (1998) "communities of practice" (CoP) framework, this study explores the shared repertoire of humor practices in the creation of community within the context of a culturally diverse and multilevel adult Arabic language classroom consisting of two native speakers, five heritage language learners…

The Spanish tense system was chosen as a starting point to establish the systematic character of the Spanish used in situations of intense code switching between Spanish and English. The tense system was chosen for two reasons: (1) the distinction among past tenses (in particular, the imperfect indicative vs. the preterite and the past continuous)…