Abstract This study explores the identity formation of two postsecondary language teachers and course coordinators—one in German and one in French—as they created intermediate‐level, content‐based social justice curricular units for a multiyear project. Using a multiple‐case‐study methodology and cultural–historical activity theory, this qualitative investigation answers the following research question: How do experienced postsecondary language teachers (re)construct and (re)negotiate their identities while developing social justice teaching materials? Findings, based on multicycle descriptive coding, reveal that participants’ past experiences, personal values, feelings of self‐doubt, and positionality as content‐based language teachers influenced their language teacher identity, as did tensions within and across three activity systems: the curriculum development project, classroom teaching, and the coordination of multisection courses. These findings have important implications for teacher professional development and community building related to social justice in language education.

Abstract This study considers the relative benefits for vocabulary learning of exposure to two types of texts—literary or nonliterary—used with two teaching approaches. These approaches were termed functional and creative, respectively. In the former, learners’ attention was drawn to factual information and linguistic features in order to develop their linguistic knowledge. In the latter, the aim was to stimulate learners’ personal and emotional response, by drawing their attention to the text's emotional content and how language was used to express meaning. We analyzed data from 160 learners of French in eight schools in England. Learners in four schools studied French poems and those in another four studied French factual texts. Teachers in each text condition employed functional and creative methods of exploitation within a counterbalanced design. We assessed two types of vocabulary knowledge at pre‐ and posttest: meaning recall of vocabulary contained in the texts, and learners’ general vocabulary size. Our results indicated learning gains across both text types. There were, however, important interactions between text type and teaching approach and between text type and the order in which the teaching approaches were used. Finally, we consider the implications of these findings for understanding of vocabulary learning through literature and for classroom practice.

Abstract As part of a larger project investigating language awareness in plurilingual settings across educational levels through a multiple case study, this article zooms in on students’ language awareness as it unfolds in a classroom in a Danish upper secondary school, in the context of a compulsory, plurilingual general language awareness course. Considering language awareness as a sociocognitive phenomenon that may meaningfully be observed through students’ engagement with language in the classroom, qualitative data were collected through observation, interviews, and collections of student work, and analyzed using an abductive form of qualitative content analysis. The initial deductive analysis is based on a theoretical model of language awareness; additional, inductive analyses lead to more nuanced descriptions of students’ metalinguistic, practical, and critical language awareness. Finally, a contextualized analysis of one example is given to illustrate the collaborative unfolding of language awareness in this context, leading to the conclusion that the different forms of language awareness studied are often interlinked and that they should be viewed as such both in research and teaching practice.

Abstract Audiobooks allow language learners to read and listen to the same text simultaneously; yet the effects of this bimodal input (written and spoken) on learners’ comprehension have been inconsistent, suggesting that the conditions under which audiobooks can help comprehension are not well understood. As such, I explored silent reading speed and text complexity as two potential variables that moderate reading‐while‐listening (RWL) comprehension. In a within‐participant design, 46 English learners in an American university read, listened to, and simultaneously read and listened to two complexity versions of a fictional text. Mixed‐effects regression modeling revealed that participants comprehended better in the RWL conditions than in the listening‐only conditions, echoing findings from the captions literature. This effect was moderated by neither silent reading speed nor text complexity. There were also no main effects between RWL and reading‐only conditions, indicating limitations in the use of audiobooks in language classrooms to promote written text comprehension.

Abstract As an international phenomenon, standardization has become increasingly prominent, and language has been curricularized through learning progressions, curricula, and high‐stakes assessments. Curricularized systems exist in tension with what we know about how individuals develop language. As scholars have asserted, language development is mediated by students’ motivation, investment, and agency, suggesting that learners’ goals and purposes for communication are key drivers of language learning. A contradiction therefore exists in institutionalized language teaching: How can curricularized goals—that, by definition, are not created for individual students—be negotiated such that students’ own language goals and curricularized ones work together rather than in opposition? We take up recent calls for teacher‐informed research and use qualitative case‐study and constructivist grounded theory to synthesize insights from a set of US elementary teachers teaching in English‐medium classrooms. We engaged in an inquiry‐based professional development initiative with these teachers to explore how they address students’ purposes and goals for language use in the context of the curricularization that takes place in schools. Findings suggest a complex and interdependent set of instructional practices that form a possible pedagogical model that navigates expectations found in curricularized classroom settings with multilingual students.

Abstract This study responds to calls to reexamine the L2 motivational self system framework in order to understand motivations to learn languages other than English. Specifically, we explore Indigenous Taiwanese students’ heritage language learning motivation from a possible selves perspective. Following work on the rooted L2 self, the construct of the Indigenous heritage self is incorporated to capture the passion and conviction that motivates learners to maintain language use and revitalize cultural legacies. A nationwide questionnaire survey was administered to 293 indigenous Taiwanese high school students (aged 15–18). Exploratory factor analysis points to the need to include the Indigenous heritage self in an account of the motivation to learn endangered Indigenous languages. The composite elements of the Indigenous heritage self consist of goals focused on preserving the Indigenous language and cultures, as well as an emotional attachment to the heritage culture. Furthermore, multiple regression results show that learners’ Indigenous heritage self and ideal future self are significant contributors to motivational intensity and classroom engagement. Findings indicate that community‐based motivation is equally important as individual learners’ idealized future images in motivating Indigenous language learning. The article concludes by suggesting curriculum initiatives that incorporate motivational strategy instruction aimed at developing an ideal self for speaking the Indigenous language, bridging classroom content and the cultural immersive experiences that students have outside formal environments.

Abstract This article examines how second language (L2) interactional competence is manifested in students’ use of “and”‐prefaced turns when doing meaning‐focused oral tasks in pairs and small groups. Drawing on video recordings from English‐as‐a‐foreign‐language upper‐secondary classes recorded in Czechia and Finland, 86 sequences involving “and”‐prefaced turns were scrutinized using multimodal conversation analysis, focusing on language, gaze, and material resources. The findings suggest that by producing “and”‐prefaced turns, students orient to task progression. These turns have two functions: task managerial and contribution to the emerging task answer. By using task‐managerial “and”‐prefaced turns, the current speaker invites another student to participate, while in “and”‐prefaced contributions to the task answer, a participant adds to, generalizes, or modifies the previous task answer. The analysis shows that students mobilized their L2 interactional competence in producing “and”‐prefaced turns in close coordination with embodied resources and with respect to the spatio‐material surroundings and the nature of the task. These findings contribute to the multimodal reconceptualization of the grammar–body interface and research on turn‐initial particles within L2 interactional competence.