This study adopts the long-established SLA concept, focus on form, in investigating the degree and characteristics of attention to language during teacher-whole class interaction embedded in content communication in English medium instruction (EMI) science classes. With the global spread of EMI programs, there is an urgent need to explore whether these meaning-oriented classes, often carrying a large amount of subject knowledge, are realizing the integration of language into content. Data was obtained from 30 video recorded EMI science lessons from seven high schools in China, taught by 15 native speakers of English. The teachers’ high English proficiency eliminates an often-limiting factor in conducting classroom interaction in EMI classrooms. Findings show that compared to previous studies there was fairly regular focus on form, although still limited, and a balanced use between preemptive and reactive focus on form. Negotiation of meaning was rare. While negative evidence was lacking, high quality elaborated input was often found in teacher feedback moves in both preemptive and reactive focus on form. A shift in EMI pedagogy is called for, particularly in increasing the quantity and diversity of corrective feedback, and a more fundamental change of the mode of interaction in EMI classes to include more learner-learner interaction.

This qualitative study explores an underrepresented area in academic (discourse) socialization research: The use of humor in academic development. More specifically, it demonstrates how humor can be used as a pragmatic tool in regulating and reproducing academic communities. Using language socialization theory and communities of practice as its conceptual lenses, the present study analyzes a case study of an international engineering research team conducting collaborative research and holding weekly research meetings. The data consisted of video recordings of weekly team meetings, interviews with the research team professor and students, and extensive field notes. The findings indicated that through the use of teasing, self-deprecation, and disparagement, the research team socialized students into professional identity and collegiality. Humor provided space for shifting expert–novice roles and fostered bonding around group identity. This study contributes to existing research by reflecting the situated nature of academic discourse socialization within research teams that operate at the intersection of professional and academic discourse.

The aim of this article is to explore how collaborative scriptwriting unfolds as a human and more-than-human endeavor by exploring the question: how do entanglements of human and more-than-human participants make a difference in the collaborative script writing of a school musical? With data from an upper secondary school musical project, the article tunes in with agential realism and thinking-with-theory to analyze three events from the collaborative scriptwriting. The article widens the perspective on authorship and discusses the question of who is writing by exploring collaborative writing as unfolding in-between human and more-than-human participants. The article points at how the entanglements of multiple human (students) and more-than-human (e.g. search engines, music, and movement) participants made a difference to the writing by offering a release of tension, humor, and ideas. These differences were highly engaging and affective, yet the students-with-laptop used different strategies when striving to convert the ideas into text. The article encourages teachers to consider how word-by-word-writing in collaborative writing might be counterproductive because it can stall the affective intensity and idea-ing in the writing.

Upper secondary school textbooks are widely used as educational material. Textbooks can, however, differ greatly, for example in the choice of linguistic resources. Comparing textbooks can therefore highlight how students will have access to different kinds of support in their learning process. This study explores the support found in textbooks for upper secondary Swedish as a second language students as they prepare for a high-stake writing test. Six textbooks are analysed regarding two types of linguistic resources, for explaining writing and engaging the students. Systemic functional linguistics are employed to examine explaining resources (lexical and conjunctive cohesion) as well as engaging resources (addressing the reader and appraisal). The results display how the varying presence of such resources influences the range of potential support available to the students and how teachers need to use textbooks in a conscious and critical manner. To strengthen teachers’ professional judgement as textbook users, the article presents a toolbox of linguistic resources for explaining and engaging in the classroom.

Where English medium instruction (EMI) is well established in Asia, notably secondary schools in Hong Kong, teachers’ and students’ translanguaging practices have been studied for years. Recently, however, translanguaging studies began focusing on emerging EMI contexts, especially in higher education, in Asian countries with no history of Anglophone colonization but relatively high proportions of international students and faculty. Accordingly, this paper explores how translanguaging was practiced and affected teaching and learning in a linguistically and culturally diverse tertiary EMI classroom in Taiwan. Guided by the frameworks of translanguaging and interactional scaffolding, this case study illuminates translanguaging practices’ impact on student engagement and participation in such settings, and in particular, on students’ reluctance to participate. Analysis of classroom-observation data reveals the potential for combining interactional ­scaffolding moves with translanguaging practices to (1) enhance learning opportunities during teacher-student interactions, especially among quieter and more passive local Taiwanese students, and (2) validate all students’ unique cultural and linguistic resources. The findings showcase practical implications for EMI researchers and practitioners.

While students’ epistemic claims have garnered scholarly interest, teachers’ uses of such claims in classroom discourse have received much less attention. This conversation-analytic study fills this gap by examining uses of explicit claims of understanding (e.g. I understand the question; I know whatchu mean) in L2 classrooms. Our analysis shows that these claims can be employed to respond to two types of student contributions: first, students’ persistent trouble with self-repairs of their own grammatical errors; and second, ‘borderline’ answers or suggestions. We show that as part of the teacher’s multi-unit feedback turn, these claims explicitly and ostensibly validate the comprehensibility of the student turn or the logic behind a student contribution. In using such claims, the teacher can (1) momentarily and explicitly shift to language-focused pedagogical work or (2) modulate a prior stance towards the student contribution. Data consist of 26 hours of video-recordings of high-beginner and low-intermediate adult ESL classes. The findings contribute to teacher feedback and error correction literature in L2 classrooms by highlighting how explicit claims of understanding can be marshalled as a resource for developing complex and nuanced responses to learner contributions. They also add to a growing body of work on overt formulations of intersubjectivity in pedagogical talk.

Acknowledging that instruction is not “race-blind” and that it may be used in ways that are not helpful, and, indeed, may be harmful to students, I take issue with this article’s lack of accuracy, tone, and methodology in describing Isabel Beck and Margaret McKeown’s empirical and applied work on vocabulary instruction. The article refers to this work as “tiered vocabulary” and inaccurately collapses two distinct parts of Beck and McKeown’s work: word tiers and robust vocabulary instruction. Moreover, the article moves beyond analysis of instruction to implications of racist intent. The article’s empirical evidence rests on observations during one school year in one secondary school (presented in an introductory vignette) and without evidence to support conclusions drawn about teachers and students. This response provides clear, cited examples of the instruction’s reliance on students’ own language as pivotal in classroom work and makes an argument for its positive value in education and students’ adult lives.

This article reports a case study of the local enactment of a supportive mainstream language program in two elementary classrooms in a school district with an increasing number of linguistically and culturally diverse students. The study explores how teachers and multilingual learners (MLs) in this context navigate the school’s supportive mainstream language program, a type of alternative instructional program, that pulls MLs out of their mainstream classrooms for English language development instruction. Most US language education policies currently outline alternative instructional language programs, such as supportive mainstream and sheltered instruction programs, as options for districts and schools. To understand MLs’ literacy development opportunities in such programs, the study examines literacy identity construction through the interaction of participants’ language ideologies and literacy practices as they enact the language program. Drawing on the theory of heteroglossia and works on literacy communities, the article unpacks the nuances of language-restrictive programs that position MLs in deficit light. The findings highlight the dissonance between participants’ ideologies and literacy practices used negotiate their subjectivities, and constructed deficit identities within the school’s dominant hegemonic literacy community. The findings are discussed considering their implications for building authentic literacy communities and incorporating an equity perspective into language policies.

Whilst mainstream schools in England may encourage multilingualism by insisting on the study of foreign languages, multilingual children are not always provided with support for the maintenance of their heritage languages and cultures. In response to this shortcoming, communities organise themselves to support their young members by setting up extra-curricular education institutions or associations, also called complementary schools, which contribute to the cultural and linguistic maintenance of minority communities. Through emblematic extracts from a fourteen-month ethnographic research in an Italian complementary school in London, this article examines how HL learners engage in and reflect on their multilingual practices and how they develop agency in their learning environment. The findings illustrate how critical modes of teaching and learning that make space for multilingualism can provide children with unique opportunities to discover, explore and experiment with their multilingual and multicultural selves, which, in turn, permit them to access linguistic resources and legitimise multilingual learner identities. Expanding on Fishman’s notion of ‘breathing space’, the article suggests that complementary schools represent a space where minority languages but also pedagogical practices can breathe and develop.

This study investigates conceptualisations of ‘good’ writing held by local education leads, primary school teachers and their pupils following the most recent iteration of England’s National Curriculum. Despite curricular changes designed to improve writing performance, significant discrepancies in ‘good’ writing constructs and priorities are recorded across stakeholder groups: leads primarily value the interpersonal and stylistic aspects of writing, pupils conceptualise writing quality as a mastery of ‘technical accuracy’ whereas teachers frame writing as an opposition between reception matters and technical accuracy. Our analysis also indicates that the latest curriculum guidelines provide less detailed information on the non-compositional aspects of writing than earlier descriptors. This is likely to influence school practice and negatively impact the development of a shared concept of ‘good’ school writing that may be foundational for substantial improvements in children’s writing outcomes.