Volume 7, Issue 1 -

SLA research on age in naturalistic contexts has examined learners’ ultimate attainment, while instructed research has emphasized the rate of learning (Birdsong 2014. Dominance and age in bilingualism. Applied Linguistics 35(4). 374–392; Muñoz 2008. Symmetries and asymmetries of age effects in naturalistic and instructed L2 learning. Applied Linguistics 29(4). 578–596). However, both streams of research, which view age as a biological construct, have overlooked this construct through an ideological lens. To address this gap, and in keeping with Blommaert’s (2005. Discourse . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) call to examine language ideologies and related ideologies in an era of superdiversity, our paper explores the ideology undergirding age-based research and examines it in conjunction with the practice-based approach to better understand the use of Burmese as a heritage language, a language characterized by a hierarchical and an age-determined honorific system. Drawing on data from a larger ethnographic study involving Burmese migrants in the US, analyses of the bilingual practice of address forms of generation 1.5 Burmese youth demonstrated that age was relationally constructed. While these youth strategically adopted ‘traditional’ linguistic practices ratified by Burmese adults when interacting with their parents, such practices were invoked and subverted in interactions involving their siblings and other Burmese adults less familiar to them. In focusing on the social and linguistic struggles encountered by these transnational multilingual youth, this paper also addresses the complexities surrounding heritage language learning.

Native-speakerism and authenticity are two subjects that have been written on extensively in the field of English language teaching, but the links between the two have yet to be explored in any great depth. This paper extensively reviews the literature on native-speakerism and authenticity and outlines where the connections between these two concepts, both practical and theoretical, may lie. Native-speakerism and authenticity are first briefly introduced and contextualised separately, and a theoretical framework is then presented to explain the connections between them based on the key foundational topics of authority, culturism, and cultural capital. Following this, the paper moves on to explain how these connections manifest in the ELT industry to influence the lives of ‘non-native speaker’ teachers in terms of student perceptions, self-perceptions, and professional discrimination, and how these are both influential on, and propagated by, the sales rhetoric of the ELT industry. Finally some suggestions are given for possible avenues of future research.

In light of the increase of international graduate students, the dynamics of higher education in English speaking countries have changed dramatically coupled with an obvious gap between native English speaking (NES) and English as second language (ESL) graduate students in terms of their academic literacy. As a key component of academic literacy, academic writing consists of noticeable differences between these two cohorts of students. Against the backdrop of ongoing attention to the process and practice of academic writing, this study examines Chinese ESL graduate students’ intertextual practices in composing their academic writing, especially, when the students newly arrived in an English speaking world. Intertextual practice in this study is concerned about not only the transgressive intertextual practice or plagiarism behaviours, but how Chinese ESL students draw on external sources in developing their own writing. This study shows that the most salient feature in the intertextual practice of the participants is the use of indirect quotes rather than syntheses in their own words, and most of the external sources are used to introduce new beliefs, ideas, or issues to their writing. In addition, this study explores possible factors that mediate these practices in consideration of the linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds of the Chinese ESL students.

Discourse markers (DMs) are of particular interest in the field of second language acquisition because a speaker’s use of L2 DMs may be good indicators for measuring the effect of exposure to the target language community on his/her L2 pragmatic competence. Previous studies lack detailed comparisons of the use of DMs in terms of frequency, variety, and function by a higher exposure group and a lower exposure group of L2 users. Previous studies lack native English speakers as baseline data as well. The current study investigates the effect of English exposure on the use of English DMs by Chinese speakers of English studying in the U.S. Data for the study were gathered using individual sociolinguistic interviews with five native English speakers and ten Chinese speakers of English at the University of Florida. The L2 exposure amount was assessed according to their total hours of natural/social English exposure since beginning to study English. Results showed that the higher exposure group used DMs at a higher rate and a wider variety than the lower exposure group. The L2 speakers acquired six native-like markers ( and, like, just, y’know, sort of/kind of , and I mean ) at different rates. And was the easiest marker to acquire by both exposure groups. Like and y’know showed clear differences in terms of frequency and function between the two exposure groups.