Global Language Research Articles

Language ideologies and language teaching in the global world: An introduction to the special issue

Aims: This special issue delves into language ideologies shaping multilingual education, aiming to unravel their impact on pedagogical practices and emergent multilinguals. By presenting empirical studies and critical analyses, the collection seeks to foster a nuanced understanding of language ideologies in diverse educational contexts. Approach: This guest editorial introduces language ideology as a lens, guiding an exploration of its manifestations in educational settings. Ten papers, spanning diverse linguistic landscapes, offer a comprehensive examination of language ideologies through varied methodologies. From scrutinizing teacher objections to linguistic pluralism to dissecting bilingual kindergarteners’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, the collection employs qualitative research, case studies, and critical reviews to critically engage with language ideologies in global language education. Conclusion: The special issue concludes by emphasizing the critical role of language ideologies in shaping educational landscapes and influencing emergent multilinguals’ experiences. Authors underscore the need for macro-level research, recommending a decolonial lens to address inequalities perpetuated by monoglossic practices. The collection advocates for inclusive spaces and challenges educators to reflect on their pedagogies, promoting a multilingual-as-a-resource orientation. By extending the scope beyond individual classrooms and examining sociopolitical and economic dimensions, the special issue contributes to ongoing efforts to reframe language ideologies and advance inclusivity in multilingual education. Originality: This special issue stands out for its originality in dissecting language ideologies through diverse lenses, spanning linguistic, sociocultural, and pedagogical dimensions. Notably, studies like Chang-Bacon and colleagues’ examination of objections to linguistic pluralism and Mendoza’s exploration of stylization in English-medium instruction enrich the discourse. The collection encourages scholars to engage with plurilingualism as a theoretically robust alternative to late translanguaging theory, promoting empirical grounding and fostering a deeper understanding of language ideologies.

Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of Leicester Cough Questionnaire in sarcoidosis: the persian version.

Cough is a common symptom among patients with sarcoidosis, and the Leicester Cough Questionnaire, a cough-specific quality-of-life measure, evaluates the impact of cough across physical, psychological, and social domains in patients with chronic cough. The aim of this study was cross-cultural adaptation and validation of Persian version of Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ) in pulmonary sarcoidosis in Iran. Psychometric analyses included translation and back translation of the questionnaire, face validity, content validity, construct validity, criterion-related validity, internal consistency, and test -retest reliability were performed. Twenty-five participants demonstrated no major language barriers or difficulties in completing the questionnaire and adequate face validity of ≥1.5. Twelve experts confirmed the content validity was good (CVR˃0.56, I-CVI≤0.79, S-CVI/Ave˃0.80). Totally, 190 patients were included in the study. The Pearson's coefficients and their significance's (P<0.05) showed an acceptable agreement between the LCQ and the SF-36 questionnaire. The goodness-of-fit of the conceptual model including psychological, physical, and social domains, obtained from EFA, was confirmed throughout the RMSEA of 0.09 (<0.1), NFI of 0.9, NNFI of 0.91, and CFI of 0.92 which all were ≥0.9. The Persian LCQ showed an excellent internal consistency regarding Cronbach's alpha of 0.974 and ICC (95%CI) value of 0.983 (0.977, 0.987). The psychometric properties showed that the Persian version of LCQ is a valid and reliable measure to evaluate cough-specific quality of life and is a fit-for-purpose measure for use in patients with pulmonary sarcoidosis and the results can guide clinicians in treatment decisions.

Input effects and unidirectional transfer in Mandarin–English heritage bilingual children: The case of spatial prepositional zai-phrases

Aims and objectives: This study investigates the effects of fine-grained aspects of input and cross-linguistic influence on the placement of prepositional zai-phrase ( zai-PP) in heritage Mandarin. Methodology: Utterances with zai-PPs were extracted from transcripts of an elicited narration task administered with child heritage speakers of Mandarin ( n = 27, aged 4–14) and their parents ( n = 18) in the United Kingdom, and compared with those produced by child and adult Mandarin speakers in Beijing in a similar narration task, selected from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). Data and analysis: The zai-PPs were coded for pre/postverbal placement and event semantics of co-occurring verbs, as well as innovative uses. Comparisons were made between groups of participants, and correlations were performed among child and input variables. Findings: In Mandarin, the heritage children overused postverbal zai-PPs across measures and comparisons, producing innovative uses of postverbal zai-PPs not found in the input or Beijing baselines. Their production of preverbal zai-PPs increases with age (proxy for cumulative amount of input) rather than structural frequency in their parental input. In English, they correctly placed spatial PPs postverbally. Our findings revealed protracted development of zai-PP placement in heritage Mandarin due to inherent complexity of the structure, reduction of input in the heritage language at school age, and strong unidirectional transfer from English to Mandarin. Originality: This study is among the first to understand a heritage structure by analysing speech samples of both heritage children and their parents and examine input–outcome relations between them directly. Significance: The placement of zai-PP in relation to individual verbs with different event semantics is subject to protracted development and vulnerable to majority language influence in heritage language acquisition, but further development at the school age is likely, if sufficient amounts of input are provided.

Practical Sentiment Analysis for Education: The Power of Student Crowdsourcing

Sentiment analysis provides a promising tool to automatically assess the emotions voiced in written student feedback such as periodically collected unit-of-study reflections. The commonly used dictionary-based approaches are limited to major languages and fail to capture contextual differences. Pretrained large language models have been shown to be biased and online versions raise privacy concerns. Hence, we resort to traditional supervised machine learning (ML) approaches which are designed to overcome these issues by learning from domain-specific labeled data. However, these labels are hard to come by -- in our case manually annotating student feedback is prone to bias and time-consuming, especially in high-enrollment courses. In this work, we investigate the use of student crowdsourced labels for supervised sentiment analysis for education. Specifically, we compare crowdsourced and student self-reported labels with human expert annotations and use them in various ML approaches to evaluate the performance on predicting emotions of written student feedback collected from large computer science classes. We find that the random forest model trained with student-crowdsourced labels tremendously improves the identification of reflections with negative sentiment. In addition to our quantitative study, we describe our crowdsourcing experiment which was intentionally designed to be an educational activity in an introduction to data science course.

Using altered auditory feedback to study pitch compensation and adaptation in tonal language speakers.

Human speech production is strongly influenced by the auditory feedback it generates. Auditory feedback-what we hear when we speak-enables us to learn and maintain speaking skills and to rapidly correct errors in our speech. Over the last three decades, the real-time altered auditory feedback (AAF) paradigm has gained popularity as a tool to study auditory feedback control during speech production. This method involves changing a speaker's speech and feeding it back to them in near real time. More than 50% of the world's population speak tonal languages, in which the pitch or tone used to pronounce a word can change its meaning. This review article aims to offer an overview of the progression of AAF paradigm as a method to study pitch motor control among speakers of tonal languages. Eighteen studies were included in the current mini review and were compared based on their methodologies and results. Overall, findings from these studies provide evidence that tonal language speakers can compensate and adapt when receiving inconsistent and consistent pitch perturbations. Response magnitude and latency are influenced by a range of factors. Moreover, by combining AAF with brain stimulation and neuroimaging techniques, the neural basis of pitch motor control in tonal language speakers has been investigated. To sum up, AAF has been demonstrated to be an emerging tool for studying pitch motor control in speakers of tonal languages.

Contributions of human cultures to biodiversity and ecosystem conservation.

The expansion of globalized industrial societies is causing global warming, ecosystem degradation, and species and language extinctions worldwide. Mainstream conservation efforts still focus on nature protection strategies to revert this crisis, often overlooking the essential roles of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP&LC) in protecting biodiversity and ecosystems globally. Here we assess the scientific literature to identify relationships between biodiversity (including ecosystem diversity) and cultural diversity, and investigate how these connections may affect conservation outcomes in tropical lowland South America. Our assessment reveals a network of interactions and feedbacks between biodiversity and diverse IP&LC, suggesting interconnectedness and interdependencies from which multiple benefits to nature and societies emerge. We illustrate our findings with five case studies of successful conservation models, described as consolidated or promising 'social-ecological hope spots', that show how engagement with IP&LC of various cultures may be the best hope for biodiversity and ecosystem conservation, particularly when aligned with science and technology. In light of these five inspiring cases, we argue that conservation science and policies need to recognize that protecting and promoting both biological and cultural diversities can provide additional co-benefits and solutions to maintain ecosystems resilient in the face of global changes.

Prospective English language teachers' understandings of global English language teaching

AbstractDespite various calls for a thorough re‐conceptualization of current English language teaching (ELT) practices, incorporating courses for critical perspectives on linguistic and cultural diversity is still a major challenge in most teacher education programmes in many English as a foreign language (EFL) countries. Therefore, we explored the evolving perspectives of English as a global language among Turkish pre‐service English teachers (PELTs) in response to a global Englishes‐focused curriculum. Using self‐report data, the study reveals participants' complex and diverse views on language varieties in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) communication, driven by various reasons. After a GE‐oriented course, most participants shifted to plurilithic orientations as they softened their beliefs in native‐speaker English superiority and developed a more sophisticated understanding of English. Seven participants with monolithic orientation appeared to reduce the complex and dynamic nature of language to racialized stereotypes associated with native speaker norms. Based on the findings, how language orientations and ideologies may inform teacher preparation in language teaching was discussed. Several recommendations for further research and preparation of PELTs were made.

Language and executive function relationships in the real world: insights from deafness

Abstract Executive functions (EFs) in both regulatory and meta-cognitive contexts are important for a wide variety of children’s daily activities, including play and learning. Despite the growing literature supporting the relationship between EF and language, few studies have focused on these links during everyday behaviours. Data were collected on 208 children from 6 to 12 years old of whom 89 were deaf children (55% female; M = 8;8; SD = 1;9) and 119 were typically hearing children (56% female, M = 8;9; SD = 1;5). Parents completed two inventories: to assess EFs and language proficiency. Parents of deaf children reported greater difficulties with EFs in daily activities than those of hearing children. Correlation analysis between EFs and language showed significant levels only in the deaf group, especially in relation to meta-cognitive EFs. The results are discussed in terms of the role of early parent–child interaction and the relevance of EFs for everyday conversational situations.

LEGAL PROTECTION OF LINGUISTIC MINORITY UNDER DISCRIMINATION: THE CASE OF ANGLOPHONE CAMEROON

The minority English-speaking population in Cameroon, where French is the majority language, has a number of political, economic, and social complaints that collectively make up the "Anglophone problem." These grievances are described using the terms discrimination, marginalization, and second-class citizenship. The right to speak English in Cameroon must always be upheld as a fundamental right. To protect the rights of minorities, Cameroon has established a number of laws. Since Cameroon and many other countries have ratified a number of human rights instruments, it is the state's duty to safeguard all the rights guaranteed by these instruments, including those of minorities. As demonstrated by the current crisis, another escalation in that cycle, there are several political systemic deficiencies that need to be closed if Cameroon is to grow as a single nation. Greater localized control over political and financial resources might be necessary to achieve this. In order to better serve the needs of citizens, existing institutions and leadership structures must become more accommodating.

The Dutch Language in the Muslim World (1600-1800)

ABSTRACT There was much contact between the Dutch Republic and Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) (1602-1799) undertook extensive commercial activity in the Indian Ocean and Indonesian archipelago, where many Muslims lived. The VOC established trading posts in Bengal, across the Indian sub-continent, in Persia, the Yemen, and at its headquarters in the East Indies at Batavia. Whilst people in these areas practised several religions including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity, most of these areas had significant Muslim populations, often with Muslim rulers. I am undertaking a project to analyse who spoke and wrote Dutch to whom and when in the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Given the scale of the Muslim world, it will be useful to divide it into two parts: one that focuses on the Indonesian archipelago and another on other countries with Muslim populations. This article examines what the second part of this project might look like, mapping out the form and content of a project on contact between Dutch and languages spoken in the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Family language policy in multilingual Filipino families in Italy

ABSTRACT Many heritage speakers in diaspora communities are multilingual individuals, often speaking two or more heritage languages alongside the societal majority language as well as another lingua franca (i.e. English). This paper examines the multilingual practices of 26 Filipino speakers in Italy (15 from the first generation and 11 second generation) in the framework of Family Language Policy. Four main findings emerge from the sociolinguistic interviews: (1) the multilingualism of the first generation is reduced in second generation, with Philippine regional languages seldom transmitted to children; this is reflected in a varied attitude toward these languages; (2) in parent–children interactions the mixing of Filipino and Italian prevails, thus, although Italian is present, Filipino is always maintained, confirming an overall positive attitude; (3) English is never selected as the only language of communication, but rather in combination with Italian or Filipino; (4) in the second generation, the exclusive use of Italian occurs with peers or younger interlocutors (e.g. siblings, partners, children). This study further contributes to our understanding of linguistic choices among multilingual migrants by allowing a comparison with other Filipino diasporic communities in Asia, North America and Australia.

Applications, techniques, and best practices for using ChatGPT

The future of a machine writing our reports for us could also lead to it carrying out our consultations, a scenario whose relevance is open to debate. Nevertheless, the present offers us new artificial intelligence tools that can support us in our daily activities. The publication in 2017 of Transformers initiated a disruptive revolution by enabling the emergence of major language models, of which ChatGPT is the best known. In view of their growing adoption, the authors felt it would be useful to offer some pragmatic advice on how to improve the use of these tools. In this article, we first look at how ChatGPT works and its potential applications in medicine, before providing a practical guide to using it to get the best results.

Redesigning the Learning Plan of the English for Islamic Banking Course

The development of Islamic Banking both nationally and globally has experienced a significant increase in both the amount of assets managed and their performance. This development is marked by the spread of Islamic banking offices and networks throughout Indonesia. Such development requires the support of human resources who have skills and knowledge related to Sharia-based banking practices as well as able to compete with the global world. In this regard, language skills, especially English language as a global language become important. Nevertheless, there is a dearth in textbooks that specifically teach people how to conduct Sharia banking practices in English. Thus, this research aims to redesign and improve the language skills of employees and prospective employees of Islamic banking through learning plans and learning objectives that suit industry needs. The present study conducted a needs analysis toward employees, lecturers, college alumni, Sharia-based bank guilds. The present study composed a textbook which consists of eight units to teach employees of Sharia-based banks to conduct banking practices in English. The learning materials are also equipped with learning objectives, aiming to improve the language skills of learners.

Do you say uh or uhm? A cross-linguistic approach to filler particle use in heritage and majority speakers across three languages.

Filler particles like uhm in English or ähm in German show subtle language-specific differences and their variation in form is related to socio-linguistic variables like gender. The use of fillers in a second language has been shown to differ from monolinguals' filler particle use in both frequency and form in different language contexts. This study investigates the language-specific use of filler particles by bilingual heritage speakers in both their languages, looking at the dominant majority language in the society and their minority heritage language spoken at home. This is done based on heritage Russian and German data and majority German and English data from the RUEG corpus. Language-specific fillers were extracted from the corpus and analyzed for their occurrence and segmental form. The frequency analysis suggests an influence of bilingualism, age group, and formality of the situation on the filler frequency across all languages. The number of filler particles is higher in formal, older, and bilingual speech. The form analysis reveals an effect of language and gender on the type of filler particle. The vocalic-nasal filler particles (e.g., uhm) are more frequently found in German and English and in female speech of these languages. Heritage speakers of Russian in contact with German and English show higher use of vocalic-nasal forms also in their Russian while producing similar gender related patterns to monolingual speakers in both their languages. The higher frequency of filler particles in formal situations, older speakers and in bilingual speech, is discussed related to cognitive load which is assumed to be higher in these contexts while speech style which differs between situations and social groups is also considered as explanation. The higher use of vocalic-nasal filler particles in German and English suggests language specific filler particle preferences also related to the socio-linguistic variable gender in these languages. The results from heritage speakers suggest and influence on filler particle form in their heritage language, while also revealing socio-linguistic usage patterns related to gender which are produced by heritage speakers similarly to monolinguals in their respective language.

Digital reading comprehension instruction in English for children with English as an additional language: A systematic review

BackgroundDigital literacy instruction is increasingly common in contemporary practices and can accommodate learners with a range of needs. This systematic review explores the use and effects of technology during reading comprehension instruction involving school‐aged children learning English as an additional language (EAL). Our aim was to provide broad, global coverage that reflects the state of research in the field.MethodsWe searched databases using terms related to EAL, reading comprehension and digital literacy instruction to identify relevant studies published on the topic between 2010 and 2023. Data were extracted regarding study context, participant characteristics, methodology, instruction characteristics and outcomes. We quantified the outcomes of instruction using standardised measures of effect size where possible and appraised the research quality of each study.ResultsA total of 4382 studies were identified. Of these, 53 met our inclusion criteria. Studies were conducted across a variety of low‐ and high‐resource environments, including countries where English is a majority language and those where it is a non‐majority language. Learners from kindergarten through 11th grade were included across the studies. A range of reading comprehension strategies were utilised within the context of digital instruction, with multiple‐strategy instruction the most common. Digital instruction resulted in statistically significant gains in reading comprehension in 32 studies (small to large effect sizes). Our research quality analysis revealed variability in terms of rigour, further adding to the diversity across studies. We conducted a sub‐analysis of eight studies that met the highest standards of research quality. Like the full set of 53 studies, these eight studies reported on diverse types of digital instruction and diverse reading comprehension outcomes but tended to result in smaller effect sizes.ConclusionsDigital reading comprehension instruction can result in reading comprehension gains for children learning EAL, though findings are mixed. Further high‐quality research is needed.

SEEUNRS: Semantically Enriched Entity-Based Urdu News Recommendation System

The advancement in the production, distribution, and consumption of news has fostered easy access to the news with fair challenges. The main challenge is to present the right news to the right audience. The news recommendation system is one of the technological solutions to this problem. Much work has been done on news recommendation systems for the major languages of the world, but trivial work has been done for resource-poor languages like Urdu. Another significant hurdle in the development of an efficient news recommendation system is the scarcity of an accessible and suitable Urdu dataset. To this end, an Urdu news mobile application was used to collect the news data and user feedback for 1 month. After refinement, the first-ever Urdu dataset of 100 users and 23,250 news was curated for the Urdu news recommendation system. In addition, SEEUNRS , a semantically enriched entity-based Urdu news recommendation system, is proposed. The proposed scheme exploits the hidden features of a news article and entities to suggest the right article to the right audience. Results have shown that the presented model has an improvement of 6.9% in the F1 measure from traditional recommendation system techniques.

Connecting chronotopes and language ideologies: Educator views on migrants’ majority language use in vocational education

This study explores the role of language and migrant students’ language use in the interplay of chronotopes (Bakhtin 1981) and language ideologies (Blommaert 1999) in vocational education and training (VET) in Finland. The study scrutinises how 16 educators imagined and situated migrant students’ language use and constructed values for the majority language and migrant students’ other languages. Data were gathered team-ethnographically in a VET institute. Critical sociolinguistic analysis showed that language use was spatiotemporally located in present education and present and future blue-collar worksites. In these timespaces, the majority language was valorised and viewed as a tool for graduating from VET and performing blue-collar work tasks. The findings indicate that migrant students’ imagined language use rarely extends beyond their VET education or worksites, and that their diverse language resources should thus be better considered and valued in VET.

Evolutionary pathways of complexity in gender systems

Abstract Humans categorize the experience they encounter in various ways, which is mirrored, for instance, in grammatical gender systems of languages. In such systems, nouns are grouped based on whether they refer to masculine/feminine beings, (non-)humans, (in)animate entities, or objects with specific shapes. Languages differ greatly in how many gender assignment rules are incorporated in gender systems and how many word classes carry gender marking (gender agreement patterns). It has been suggested that these two dimensions are positively associated as numerous assignment rules are better sustained by numerous agreement patterns. We test this claim by analyzing the correlated evolution (Continuous method in BayesTraits) and making the causal inferences about the relationships (phylogenetic path analysis) between these 2 dimensions in 482 languages from the global Grambank database. By applying these methods to linguistic data matched to phylogenetic trees (a world tree and individual families), we evaluate whether various types of gender assignment rules (semantic, phonological, and unpredictable) are causally linked to more gender agreement patterns on the global level and in individual language families. Our results on the world language tree suggest that semantic rules are weakly positively correlated with gender agreement and that the development of agreement patterns is facilitated by different rules in individual families. For example, in Indo-European languages, more agreement patterns are caused by the presence of phonological and unpredictable rules, while in Bantu languages, the driving force of agreement patterns is the variety of semantic rules. Our study shows that the relationships between agreement and rules are family-specific and yields support to the idea that more distinct rules and/or rule types might be more robust in languages with more pervasive gender agreement.

A Study on the Selection and Development of English Education A Case Study of China and Belgium

A Study on the Selection and Development of English Education A Case Study of China and Belgium

Encouraging English Language Reading in Cambodia: a Case Study of Takeo Provincial Higher Educational Institutions

English holds paramount significance as a global language, widely employed by diverse nations, including Cambodia, where it functions as a foreign language. Particularly in Cambodia, English has become indispensable for tertiary education. Employing a mixed methods approach, this study surveyed 183 university students, with ten subsequently participating in voluntary interviews. The findings indicate that students predominantly exhibit extrinsic motivation in their approach to English reading, with no discernible variance based on gender. The research also proposes several strategies for educators to enhance students' reading motivation, identifying the strategy of having students explain their comprehension to others as particularly efficacious. The study underscores the significance of English reading and elucidates the challenges students encounter in related activities. Ultimately, the study advocates for future investigations with larger sample sizes to further enrich scholarly insights.