Bilingualism is associated with a number of false beliefs, myths and misconceptions, which carry implications for bilingual education and policymaking. While the language used, often in the media, to express such misconceptions may have become more subtle, a negative bias remains and is arguably more difficult to detect and defend against. The…

Early childhood education serves an increasing number of multilingual children, and teachers are challenged to create high-quality learning opportunities in the classroom for all children. The child's engagement and interactions with the teacher are important in this respect. The present study therefore examined how multilingualism relates to…

For Chinese students, studying in a country with different cultural components and language structures is challenging. Compared to English, the Chinese prefers shorter and simple sentence structure and allows for two sentences to be stated side by side. Different sentence structures in Chinese may influence native-Chinese readers' understanding of…

Verbal Fluency (VF) task total scores are widely used in language attrition studies, but they do not provide insight into the processes underlying optimal performance. We analyse the efficacy of clustering (subcategories within a category) and switching (shifting between these subcategories) strategies in phonemic (PVF) and semantic (SVF) tasks.…

We investigated the role of socioeconomic status (SES) in the unfolding of vocabulary and text-comprehension skills in language minority bilingual children, who are educated exclusively in their L2. For comparison, a monolingual control group was also tested, consisting of children of the same age and schooling. We administered a synonyms task to…

Previous research has shown that language learners tend to produce fewer and less-natural multi-word sequences (MWSs) compared to native speakers of the same language. In the present study, collocational processing was investigated in a sentence reading task. Specifically, the familiar collocations were predicted to modulate the P3 mean amplitudes…

This study explored whether the directionality of the relation between majority language and various facets of socioemotional development (three to 5 years old) differs between children with different language backgrounds. 12,951 children (49% girls; 85% White, 6% Pakistani and Bangladeshi, 3% Black, 3% Mix, 2% Indian) from the British Millennium…

Previous research on the L1 acquisition of motion event expression suggests that mapping multiple semantic components onto syntactic units is associated with greater difficulties in verb-framed than in satellite-framed languages, because the former require more complex structures (using subordination). This study investigated the impact of this…

The study sought to understand the general trajectory of children's executive function, as well as whether there was heterogeneity among monolingual English-speaking and dual language learning children in their growth of executive function. In addition, the study examined whether monolingual English-speaking and dual language learning children…

Since the earliest studies on multilingual advantages, it has proved difficult to disentangle language development from general cognition. It remains unclear whether language interdependence is an independent variable or whether observable effects are mediated by cognitive ability. Measurable effects of one language on another typically go hand in…

Collocations, e.g., apples and pears, hard worker, constitute an important avenue of linguistic enquiry straddling both grammar and the lexicon. They are sensitive to language experience, with adult L2 learners and children learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) exhibiting poor collocational knowledge. The current study piloted a novel…

In 2003, Mary Louise Pratt published a hugely influential paper in "Profession" where she took to task misconceptions about multilingualism and language learning apparent in the USA in the wake of 9/11 and consequent counter-terrorism measures. She argued that a new public idea about language was necessary in order to ensure unity and…

In this review, we evaluate the claim that translanguaging in the classroom supports the development of the bilingual lexicon by enhancing cross-linguistic transfer. To address this issue, we integrate findings from psycholinguistics and educational sciences in order to identify how effective pedagogical practices for monolingual children can be…

As the most commonly established and attested language contact phenomenon, loanwords, also known as lexical borrowings, may undergo transformations when borrowed from the source language (SL) to the borrowing language (BL). Previous studies have separately illustrated the role of perception and phonology in the borrowing process. However, the…

In this paper, I examine the changing currency of languages in the context of migration and mobility based on case studies of Filipino migrants in Australia. Drawing on two sociolinguistic studies conducted with and for Filipino migrants, I highlight how the "monolingual mindset" (Clyne, 2008) reinforced by the "White-English…