Engineering design challenges offer important opportunities for students to learn science and engineering knowledge and practices. This study examines how students' engineering notebooks across four units of the curriculum "Engineering is Elementary" (EiE) support student work during design challenges. Through educational ethnography and…

This state-of-the-art review is based on the fundamental idea that political economy should be adopted as a frame for research and discussion in applied linguistics as part of a general social turn which has taken hold in the field over the past three decades. It starts with Susan Gal's (1989) early call for such a move in sociolinguistics and…

This paper has two aims. One aim is to consider non-structural (language attitude and use) variables as valid in the field of dialect and linguistic geography in an inner Himalayan valley of Nepal, where four languages have traditionally coexisted asymmetrically and which demonstrate different degrees of vitality vs. endangerment. The other aim is…

Proficiency in English language today doesn't depend on the way language is taught or spoken in classrooms but on creativity and productivity of its diverse teachers and learners. Non-native speakers outnumber native speakers today calling for promoting equity and the concept of World Englishes through respecting diversification in language…

The purpose of the study was to uncover and describe psycholinguistic and sociocognitive factors facilitating effective reading by signing adults who are profoundly deaf and do not use hearing technology. The sample comprised four groups, each consisting of 15 adults, for a total of 60 participants. The four groups were "deaf…

This article examines different aspects of the oralman students' socio-linguistic adaptation. Scientific research has identified various obstacles oralmen face when studying at Universities in Kazakhstan, especially in the context of the English language studying process. The data used in this paper explores certain peculiarities of oralman…

Sociolinguistic research on language attitudes has revealed that non-standard accented speakers are usually perceived more negatively than members of the dominant speech community. Few studies, however, have examined whether a speaker's ethnicity, evidenced by nonlinguistic factors such as appearance, may play a role in listeners' perception of…

This study examined classroom routine and interactional patterns of Grade 5 English Language reading comprehension lessons through delineating the speech act functions of instructional discourse that was based on Malcolm's sociolinguistic model (Malcolm, 1979a; Malcolm, 1979b; Malcolm, 1982; Malcolm, 1986). It also evaluated the classroom…

Mandarin Chinese is the fastest growing foreign language by number of students in the world [Ding and Saunders 2006. "Talking up China: An Analysis of China's Rising Cultural Power and Global Promotion of the Chinese Language." "East Asia" 23 (2): 3-33], but little is known about how it is taking hold in compulsory education in…

This overview of seven years of research on language learning and teaching in Austria reflects a period of steady growth for the language teaching and learning research community, a development due to a national policy agenda aiming for a stronger research base in teacher education. The target languages of the teaching and learning processes…

Previous language attitude research indicates that presenting speech forms allows listeners to index information about and attach social meaning to the perceived group(s) of speakers. Despite the volume of research undertaken elsewhere in Asia, there appear to be no in-depth studies investigating Thai nationals' evaluations of specific varieties…

Language policies are born amidst the complex interplay of social, cultural, religious and political forces. With this in mind, Bernard Spolsky theorises that the language policy of any independent nation is driven, at its core, by four co-occurring conditions--national ideology, English in the globalisation process, a nation's attendant…

This article focuses on the differential emotional power of languages in the book-reading practices of plurilingual readers. Within a plurilingual perspective, it aims at adding nuance to the "emotional contexts of learning hypothesis" and the "theory of language embodiment". This qualitative study is based on semi-structured…

In Singapore's unique and complex linguistic environment, it is common to have Chinese-language learners from many different backgrounds in the same school classroom, which is why Singapore is nicknamed as a "language laboratory." In this paper, I hope to examine our linguistic environment and response strategies from different angles,…

This article presents findings from the first major study to investigate lexical variation and change in British Sign Language (BSL) number signs. As part of the BSL Corpus Project, number sign variants were elicited from 249 deaf signers from eight sites throughout the UK. Age, school location, and language background were found to be significant…