Reading text is a relatively recent human activity, only having been around for about 5,000 years. Through text, writers are able to communicate with others at great distances. Readers are able to perceive arbitrarily determined shapes presented against some background and then form them into meaning. As the reader becomes more proficient at reading and uses reading in more and different ways, this process of interpreting letters and words becomes increasingly automatic.

In 1992, the author of this paper was invited to New Zealand to work within the Ministry of Education on the development of a New Zealand National Languages Policy. Prior to the arrival of the author, Waite (1992a) had prepared a comprehensive document laying out the language issues in New Zealand (see also Peddie 1991). A search of the documentation available in New Zealand (see, e.g., Kaplan 1981, National Language Policy Secretariat 1989) suggests that the notion of a National Languages Policy has been under discussion in New Zealand for more than a quarter of a century. Largely, that discussion has produced a great number of seminars, retreats, symposia, colloquia, and other meetings, and a plethora of reports, most now overtaken by time.

This chapter discusses some approaches used to teach a standard variety to creole and vernacular speakers. It focuses attention on issues related to the use of creoles and vernaculars in instruction to help creole speakers develop literacy in a second language. Research has shown that literacy development, academic skills, and learning strategies transfer from the first language to the second and that literacy in the first language is a crucial base for literacy development in the second language. Advocacy for vernacular literacy as a means of facilitating the learning of a standard language differs in situations where creole has the same lexical base as the second (standard) language as opposed to situations in which the creole has a different lexical base than the second language. The policy literature as well as that describing approaches to second language learning by creole and creole-influenced vernacular speakers is discussed primarily with relevance to the Caribbean region. The chapter then surveys the literature describing approaches used in similar contexts elsewhere. Outcomes resulting from the implementation of specific policies and approaches in the contexts presented, to the extent that such outcomes have been documented, are also explored.

In the past several years the subfield of sociolinguistics known as language and gender has developed a sophistication that could not have been predicted from the research of the early 1970s. While this area of study has evolved along many of the same lines as other branches of sociolinguistics, the lessons of language and gender research have informed the wider field by producing an awareness of the subtlety of such categories as sex and gender (along with class and ethnicity); it has forced a reevaluation of these categories, once assumed to correlate in a straightforward fashion with language variation.

In this brief article, I discuss the relationship between language testing and the other sub-disciplines of applied linguistics and also the relationship, as I see it, between testing and assessment. The article starts with a brief exploration of the term ‘applied linguistics’ and then goes on to discuss the role of language testing within this discipline, the relationship between testing and teaching, and the relationship between testing and assessment. The second part of the article mentions some areas of current concern to testers and discusses in more detail recent advances in the areas of performance testing, alternative assessment, and computer assessment. One of my aims in this article is to argue that the skills involved in language testing are necessary not only for those constructing all kinds of language proficiency assessments, but also for those other applied linguists who use tests or other elicitation techniques to help them gather language data for research.

With just the two words of the title “Teaching writing,” we are thrown into ambiguity characteristic of the enterprise the title names. Is that second word a participle, referring to the activity of generating, composing, and revising ideas on paper, or is it a more static gerund noun form—writing as an artifact, as text presented on a page, performing social functions? The position we take with regard to the multiple realities encompassed in this dichotomy and in others in our field gives shape to our teaching. And that shape is changing.

The past decade has seen increasing acceptance of the perspective that there can be no disinterested, objective, and value-free definition of literacy: The way literacy is viewed and taught is always and inevitably ideological. All theories of literacy and all literacy pedagogies are framed in systems of values and beliefs which imply particular views of the social order and use literacy to position people socially. Even those views which paint literacy as a neutral, objectively definable set of skills are in fact rooted in a particular ideological perspective, and it is precisely because they obscure this orientation that they are most insidious. In fact, as Fairclough (1989) argues, one of the primary mechanisms of social control is the “naturalization” of institutional practices which legitimize and perpetuate existing power relations.

Some of the ways in which the range of discourse characteristics in Somali was extended due to the addition of written registers in 1973 have been examined. These discourse characteristics were operationalized by five major dimensions of variation in which each dimension represents a set of co-occurring linguistic features. With respect to three of these dimensions, the addition of written registers greatly extended the linguistic patterns previously in use: structural elaboration features along Dimension 1, lexical elaboration features along Dimension 2, and directive interaction features along Dimension 5.

The goal of this article is to introduce the reader to contemporary adult multilingual acquisition research within generative linguistics. In much the same way as monolingual and bilingual acquisition studies are approached within this paradigm, generative multilingual research focuses primarily on the psycholinguistic and cognitive aspects of the acquisition process. Herein, we critically present a panoramic view of the research questions and empirical work that have dominated this nascent field, taking the reader through several interrelated epistemological discussions that are at the vanguard of contemporary multilingual morphosyntax work. We finish this article with some thoughts looking towards the near future of adult multilingual acquisition studies.

This paper explores the roles of both working memory (WM) and more traditional aptitude components, such as input processing and language analytic ability in the context of foreign language learning aptitude. More specifically, the paper compares two current perspectives on language aptitude: the Stages Approach (Skehan, 2016, 2019) and the P/E Model (Wen, 2016, 2019). Input processing and noticing, pattern identification and complexification, and feedback are examined as they relate to both perspectives and are then used to discuss existing aptitude testing, recent research, and broader theoretical issues. It is argued that WM and language aptitude play different but complementary roles at each of these stages, reflecting the various linguistic and psycholinguistic processes that are most prominent in other aspects of language learning. Overall, though both perspectives posit that WM and language aptitude have equal importance at the input processing stage, they exert greater influence at each of the remaining stages. More traditional views of aptitude dominate at the pattern identification and complexification stage and WM with the feedback stage.

Politics and legislation have been entangled in language planning and policy in the United States since 1776. Regulations for immigration and citizenship (naturalization) have been in place since the Naturalization Act of 1790. This article examines the history of immigration and citizenship legislation that started with this act up to the more recent act of 1952, which included regulations requiring ability in English language and knowledge of history and government. It concludes with brief examinations of the old and redesigned Naturalization Tests.

A great deal has happened in the study and understanding of multilingualism in England since it was last considered in ARAL (Reid 1985). To examine these changes, this review will concentrate on the dynamic and contested relationships among 1) educational policy, 2) academic discourse, and 3) everyday sociolinguistic practice. Our account is limited to England and to its newer heritage languages; due to limitations of space, it also does not provide any detailed discussion of particular languages. For fuller sociolinguistic discussion of thirty one of these, we refer the reader to Alladina and Edwards (1991), a major step forwards in the documentation of linguistic diversity in the British Isles which provides an idea of the wide but uneven spread of multilingualism across a range of institutional sites (including, for example, press and broadcasting as well as education).

Formative assessment, particularly in the current form known as Assessment for Learning (AfL), has caught the attention of policymakers in many education jurisdictions. Diverse educational systems such as Hong Kong and Western Canada have publicly endorsed the principles and practice of AfL. In the United Kingdom, progressive devolution of state power from London has meant that Scotland and Wales now have national autonomy in education matters. In a dramatic reversal of policy, both of these “home” countries have in the past four years dismantled the heavily test-oriented schooling regime. Instead both the Welsh and Scottish administrations have adopted assessment policies that prioritize learning. This article discusses (1) the political and ideological trajectories that have supported the emergence of the for-learning assessment policies and (2) the fit (or lack of) between AfL principles and the prevailing espoused educational values in these two nations. The potential impact of these developments for assessment of English as an additional/second language (EAL) in schooling education will be discussed.

This review discusses only research on the discourse structure of classroom activities—lessons and other activities in which the teacher is a participant— with special attention to assumptions underlying alternative models (in the non-technical sense of that word). Two other reviews (Cazden 1986a; in press) also discuss the register of teachers and students (considered as the paradigmatic complement to syntagmatic structure); discourse among student peers (in contrast to talk with the teacher who has greater ascribed power as well as knowledge), and relationships between discourse and learning.

The global demand for English has broad implications for teacher preparation in lingua franca settings. Given that up to 80 percent of all English teachers globally are nonnative speakers of English, the quality of their professional preparation and their degree of language proficiency are key issues. This review surveys research on nonnative English-speaking teachers related to teacher preparation, including issues of pedagogy and language varieties. To illustrate actual training issues, two cases of teacher preparation experiences in Egypt and Uzbekistan are presented. The Egypt case describes the development of standards for English teachers and how they may provide a road map for professional preparation and improved English language skills. The Uzbek case provides examples of ways in which the teacher preparation program targeted needs perceived by both the trainers and the local teachers. This review also sets out goals for teacher preparation in lingua franca settings such as assisting participants to view themselves as intercultural speakers and integrating methodologies that are valued in the local context. Suggestions for future research include consideration of how teacher educators might address the issue of Inner Circle and Outer Circle varieties of English and how teachers' cultural knowledge can be addressed within teacher preparation curricula.

Racialized students are overrepresented in special- and English-learner education programs in the United States. Researchers have pointed to implicit bias in evaluation tools and evaluators as a cause resulting in calls for more culturally competent/relevant practices/assessments. However, this paper argues that racial overrepresentation is reflective of larger settler colonial frameworks embedded in linguistic standards that continue to drive education and language ideologies/practices globally but especially in U.S. schools. First, through an analysis of an orthoepic test used during the Parsley Massacre of 1937 on the island of Hispaniola, I present how the evaluation of accented language has been used to racialize and pathologize people. Secondly, through a comparative analysis of bilingualism in the U.S. and Canada, I show how linguistic variation is only devalued when it emerges from marginalized communities, affirming the white normative gaze as a mechanism for maintaining inequitable power structures. Finally, the paper presents how these logics are present in current manifestations of bilingual education. By indicating how racially, physically, and/or neurodivergent people are othered, this paper calls on the decolonization of applied linguistics in order to effectively address the over- and disproportionate representation of Black, Indigenous, and/or Latinx students within special- and English-learner programs.

Only relatively recently has discourse analysis begun to have an impact on how English grammer (i.e., the rules of morphology and syntax) is taught to non-native speakers of English. In fact, a majority of teachers of English to speakers of other languages still conceive of grammer, and thus teach grammer, as a sentence-level phenomenon (if and when they teach it). This state-of-affairs reflects a rather counterproductive view of grammer since, as Bolinger (1968; 1977) has long argued, there are relatively few rules of English grammer that are completely context-free.

Due to their unique place and function in society as well as their position on the educational ladder, universities have had a rather belated encounter with immersion education. In fact, it was not until the late 1970s (Day & Shapson, 1993) that universities in Canada were obliged to address a range of pedagogical issues as a direct result of the growth of immersion education in schools, the increasing number of immersion graduates from schools, and the overall educational success of immersion programs. Naturally, these issues are contextually framed and dependent on the historical development of immersion in each country where immersion education occurs. In countries with larger and longer immersion education traditions, the influence on universities has been greater. Three issues are of particular importance here: (1) the linguistic needs of immersion school graduates at university, (2) principles of immersion pedagogy use at the university level, and (3) immersion teacher education. The latter issue is especially pertinent to broader questions of the preparation of second language teachers and will be addressed here.For studies exploring the nature and levels of language maintenance of immersion graduates after secondary schooling, see Harley (1994), Hart, Lapkin, Swain and Howard (1991), Wesche (1985, 1993), Wesche, Morrison, Ready, and Pawley (1990) for a comprehensive review.

The contrastive study of Japanese and English discourse structures may be divided into two major areas of inquiry. The first of these areas concerns grammatical studies which examine cohesive ties, word order constraints, and sociolinguistic variations (Hinds 1982b, Kuno 1978, Makino 1978a). The second of these areas concerns specific or implied contrasts between organizational parameters which shape the overall form of discourse. Following Longacre (1976), it is possible to differentiate, minimally, among four discourse types: expository, narrative, procedural, and hortatory.

This volume of The Annual Review of Applied Linguistics explores the connections between psychology and language. In the following chapter, I will show how a field that increasingly informs psychology can also inform the psychological issues that concern applied linguists. Neurobiology and psychology have become more closely integrated in recent years as evidenced by the emergence and development of such disciplinary interfaces as biopsychology and cognitive neuroscience. The recognition that psychological phenomena are subserved by the brain is widely accepted; via developments in neuroimaging technology, the brain is becoming amenable to direct psychological investigation. In this chapter, I examine brain mechanisms that are involved in second language acquisition motivation, in cognitive/motor exploratory activity in learning, and in decision-making aspects of pragmatics in language use.