The pedagogies that are currently being put forward within a broad multilingual paradigm in languages education endorse the general principle that learning is a collaborative and dialogic process engaging learners and teachers as partners that bring diverse linguistic, cultural and other knowledge into the classroom. The plurilingual approach to…

This article draws on data generated through a multi-site collaborative inquiry with students across five English and French schools in Canada and France to investigate children's social representations of plurilingualism. Children were asked to draw a sequence of reflexive drawings of a monolingual, a bilingual and a plurilingual individual, as…

Linguistic diversity has become a defining feature of schools in the twenty-first century. How do children make sense of such diversity and their own linguistic identities? This article draws on data generated through a multi-site inquiry with five English and French schools in Canada and France to investigate children's plurilingualism. According…

In socio- and applied linguistic research, age tends to be accounted for as fixed, biographical information, and individuals in later life have rarely been considered more than marginally. In this paper, I attempt to address this oversight by presenting data from multilingual subjects over the age of 65 as they take part in a language and literacy…

In this research project, students in applied linguistics were asked to keep blogs over a three-month period in which they reported on their online informal learning of English through activities such as social networking, downloading films and TV series and listening to music on demand. The study is situated within the framework of complexity…

By means of a phraseological identification method, this study provides a general description of the use of conventional sequences (CSs) in interviews at four different levels of spoken L2 French as well as in interviews with native speakers. Use of conventional sequences is studied with regard to overall quantity, category distribution and type…

This is a compilation of reports on international literacy research. The report includes 3 separate reports on Argentina, Mexico, and France. In the first report, Melina Porto reports on a new implementation of a teacher-education program currently underway in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, under the leadership of teacher-researcher…

The proposed 1991 reforms to French spelling discussed in a previous issue of "Babel" have been abandoned. This article notes the history of other efforts to rectify French spelling and reviews the French Academy's decision-making process in the current effort. (LB)