Volume 9, Issue 2

Language in the Balkan region of Southeastern Europe has a complex and turbulent history, acutely embodied in the tripartite and trilingual state of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in which Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs all make claim to their own mutually-intelligible varieties of local “languages”. This study utilizes a linguistic landscape methodology to consider language use in Sarajevo, the capital of BiH, approximately 20 years after a brutal war that led to the establishment of the country. Data originate from three municipalities within the Sarajevo Canton – namely, Old Town, Center, and Ilidža – because of their representation of the region’s diversity and history. Signs were classified according to the three primary language varieties, i.e., Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian; BCS, representing a common core among the three varieties, as well as English, other languages, and mixed languages. The application of BCS uniquely positions the present research in comparison to other studies of language use in the region and allows for a more nuanced, less politically and ethnolinguistically fraught analysis of the communicative tendencies of users. More specifically, data indicate that actors in the linguistic landscape transcend the boundaries of their national, ethnic, and religious identities by tending towards the more neutral BCS, suggesting an orientation towards more translingual dispositions than previous variety-bound approaches have indicated. Thus, instead of the divisiveness of linguistic identity politics, the linguistic landscape of Sarajevo indicates a tendency toward inclusion and linguistic egalitarianism.

The purpose of the present paper was to investigate the propositions of ethnolinguistic identity theory among young Hungarian speakers in Slovakia. Specifically, we aimed to explore the role of ethnolinguistic identification, vitality and boundary permeability in coping with negative ethnolinguistic identities, and also how these effects impact language use. Self-report questionnaire data were collected among Hungarian-speaking secondary school students in ( N = 311). The data were analyzed using a Bayesian moderated mediation analysis with informative priors for coefficients based on an earlier study. The results provided mixed support for the hypotheses. Ethnolinguistic mobility appeared to be an outcome of a complex process, where identification, vitality and permeability operate interactively; at the same time, ethnolinguistic competition was independent of the perception of vitality and permeability, but a sole consequence of strong Hungarian identification. In addition, the results indicated that identification, vitality and competency in the outgroup language were factors predicting language use, whereas there was no support for the anticipated mediating effect of coping strategies. Findings are discussed in relation to ethnolinguistic identity theory and to the particular qualities of the local context.

Integration courses in Germany started in 2005 as a consequence of the newly promulgated immigration law, the so-called Zuwanderungsgesetz , a set of laws that restructured the 2005 legislation on foreigners in the Federal Republic of Germany with the first version of the Residence Act and the Freedom of Movement Act. Since then, although these laws have experienced changes in structure and audience, what has not changed is the presence of multilingual competences in classrooms in German as the norm. The mere presence of multilingualism in the courses does not automatically equal multilingual pedagogy. In this article, we present a quantitative study participants concerning the attitudes towards multilingualism and multilingual pedagogy of teachers in courses of German as a Second Language. The results indicate that one third of the participants present a consistent and marked “monolingual habitus” (Gogolin 1994; 1997), possibly influencing how open they are to including multilingual practices in their teaching. The remaining two thirds indicate openness to a multilingual orientation, but still engage in predominantly monolingual teaching practices: a contradicting stance in need of further investigation.

This article sets out to explore English as foreign language (EFL) teachers’ views of teaching migrant pupils with multilingual backgrounds in a regular classroom. Previous studies on multilingual pupils have mostly concentrated on second language learning contexts or on the role of pupils’ L1. In an increasingly multilingual world and due to growing migration, this study concentrates on EFL. The data were interviews with English teachers (n=7), who reflected on their experiences with migrant pupils in the foreign language classroom. The data were analysed through qualitative content analysis. The participants had not really pondered on the role of multilingualism in the EFL classroom and some underlying preconceptions could be detected. Teachers’ perception of the multilingual pupil was controversial in that they did not want to draw attention to the linguistic background of the pupil but, on the other hand, they had noticed that multilingual learners had greater language awareness than their mainstream peers. Although not fully aware of the potential of multilingualism and the pupils’ linguistic resources in EFL teaching, the teachers had used several ways of supporting their multilingual learners, reflecting the principles of translanguaging.

As Ferris (2014) states, teachers have received insufficient research attention regarding their perceptions and practices of feedback. This study, therefore, was an attempt to qualitatively explore Iranian EFL teachers’ feedback-related perceptions and practices. In addition, the discrepancies between the reported perceptions and practices were examined. The data collection consisted of qualitative interviews with 14 teachers. The data analysis (i. e., data coding using the grounded theory approach) helped develop a coding scheme in which a number of thematic categories and subcategories were delineated with regard to feedback. The findings, accordingly, revealed some noteworthy discrepancies between the teachers’ perceptions and practices. For instance, although the teachers valued peer-feedback and selective correction, they reported providing teacher-generated feedback and comprehensive commentary on grammatical errors, respectively. Also, the teachers were aware of the importance of indirect methods of correction (e. g., to promote learner autonomy), but mostly gave explicit feedback on their students’ grammatical issues. Overall, we showed that these discrepancies primarily resulted from students’ expectations. We also discussed the findings in light of sociocultural considerations and the tenets of learner engagement with feedback.

Although foreign language instruction in mixed-age (M-A) is gaining popularity (Heizmann and Ries and Wicki 2015; Lau and Juby-Smith and Desbiens, 2017; Shahid Kazi and Moghal and Aziz 2018; Thurn 2011), the research is scarce. Drawing from multiple data sources, this study investigated to what extent do peer interactions among M-A and same-age (S-A) pairs aid L2 development and how students perceive their interactions. In this study, the same learners ( N =24) aged between 10 and 12 interacted with the same and different age partners during common classroom lessons in two EFL classrooms. The results suggest that both S-A and M-A peer interactions aided L2 development. Although S-A pairs outperformed M-A pairs on the post-test, the results are not statistically significant. The analysis of students’ perceptions revealed that the majority of students prefer working in S-A to M-A pairs. In addition to age/proficiency differences, factors such as students’ relationships and perceptions of one’s own and partner’s proficiency greatly impact how they interact with one another.

The focus of this article is the multilingualism of advanced university students of languages other than English. Our research questions are the following: 1) How many foreign languages do students know and use in their everyday life? 2) In which contexts do they use their various languages? 3) How do they reflect on their multilingualism? The data were collected at the University of Helsinki by means of an electronic questionnaire, through which students were invited to answer open questions about their language use. In all, 53 students of French, German, and Swedish answered the questionnaire. The results of this qualitative study have been presented from a holistic perspective, focusing on the dynamic nature of individual multilingualism (Jessner 2008). In the paper, we also discuss how the languages in the students’ language repertoire could be interpreted as being a part of (or outside) their dominant language constellation (Aronin and Singleton 2012). The results show that students were aware of their language competence in their various L2s, although many of them did not seem to experience themselves as multilingual. Many students were strongly focused on one specific L2, but in some cases, it could be possible to talk about a more holistic multilingual identity (Henry 2017) beyond the individual language-specific identifications.

While recent research on English language teaching (ELT) in Germany has called for a more comprehensive representation of the diversity of English worldwide, learners’ perceptions of Global Englishes are currently underresearched despite their importance for a successful implementation of this change in ELT. The present paper analyzes 166 German secondary school students’ perceptions of Global Englishes, underlying cultural associations, and stereotypes. To this end, a perceptual dialect identification task, keyword association, and direct open questions were combined in a folklinguistic study. The results show that the informants consider British and American English as general standards and primarily associate English-speaking countries with Inner Circle varieties: British, American, and Australian English. British English is regarded as the default school reference norm, while American English is associated with dynamism and casualness. Furthermore, the students identify Indian and African English(es) as important Global Englishes. Their perceptions of these varieties are, however, less positive and seem to be influenced by cultural stereotypes, which might prompt them to perceive these varieties as funny or unintelligent. We suggest that learners’ existing knowledge of Global Englishes and explicit metalinguistic discussions of variation can be used as starting points to counteract such stereotypes.