Map of Transoxania (Source: Wikipedia) Editor’s note: Arabic language learning is experiencing a revival in many parts of the world, such as China, where it may be a source of…
Editor's note: Language learning and teaching is rarely about language alone. Sometimes, it is about making a political statement and taking a soft power approach, as Jeffrey Gil and Minglei…
Professor Peter Siemund, Hamburg University, during his guest lecture at Macquarie University It is easy to assume that bilinguals are better at adding another language to their repertoire. But is…
Language choice in bilingual couples as habit (excerpt from Piller, 2002, p. 137) In my research with bilingual couples, habit emerged as one of the main reasons for a couple’s…
"How bad is your cultural cringe?" (Source: Jenna Guillaume, BuzzFeed) Keith: I’m still really shit at pronouncing Lisa’s surname. With the umlaut o. Hanna: What is Lisa’s surname? (laughter) Keith:…
Livia and her classmates at a crossroads the year before entering (or not) Gymnasium (Switzerland, 2004) Secondary education as a monolingual fork in the road Let me bust a prevalent…
PASCH Schools: Partners for the future Last week I was privileged to attend the 3rd Conference of School Principals of PASCH Schools in Southeast Asia. A ‘PASCH school’ is a regular…
The researcher wearing a Zhuang employee's work uniform at the Black Clothes Zhuang House in the Ethnic Minorities Village, Nanning, China, 2014 I was surprised, frankly, during my recent fieldwork…
German International School Sydney It is one of the great narratives of our time that the market will fix everything. In education this means that parental choice is assumed to…
Chinese university students in a debate, 2011 (Photo by Nikki Feng) Public speaking can constitute an excellent language learning tool, as I discovered through participating in public speaking activities in…
The National Institute of the English Language in Tehran has used the slogan "A new language is a new life" for more than 50 years I’m preparing my lecture on…
Multilingual Hyderabad (Source: Wikimedia) It is by now widely known that bilingualism delays the onset of dementia. What is less widely known is the fact that this knowledge is almost…
Bilingual Swedish-Finnish monument in Helsinki commenmorating globally beloved children's author Tove Jansson, a Swedish-speaking Finn (Source: vanderkrogt.net) 50,000 people have signed a petition against mandatory Swedish classes in Finnish schools,…
Business card promoting private English tuition In Iran, as in many other countries around the globe, the craze for learning English has been on the rise. This tendency is attributed…
Who profits from an early start in English language learning? 不要讓你的孩子輸在起跑點上 (Don’t let your children lose out at the starting point.) is one of the most popular slogans whenever English…