How do Students with Specific Learning Differences Learn Additional Languages?

We will soon be publishing the second edition of Teaching Languages to Students with Specific Learning Differences by Judit Kormos and Anne Margaret Smith. In this post the authors explain what’s new in this edition.

When we published the first edition of our book, Teaching Languages to Students with Specific Learning Differences, in 2012, there was limited awareness among language teachers, teacher educators, material designers, language testers and researchers regarding how students with specific learning differences (SpLDs) acquire additional languages and how to support their success as language learners. Over the past decade, there has been a growing interest and increased effort to design and implement inclusive language teaching programs that cater to the diverse needs of students. In a wide range of contexts, it is now mandated at the policy level that language learners with disabilities should be provided with equitable opportunities to acquire additional languages. There has also been a remarkable shift away from medicalizing and viewing disabilities from a deficiency perspective, instead recognizing them as part of the inherent diversity of human existence and experience, highlighting the importance of removing socially constructed barriers in all aspects of life.

The new edition of our book has been fully revised to reflect these changing conceptualizations of specific learning differences and places emphasis on barriers to participation, inclusive language teaching, and assessment practices in all its chapters. Accordingly, the first updated chapter includes a detailed discussion of discourses and conceptualizations of neurodiversity and draws attention to the fact that individual learners may have different types of intersecting disabilities and disadvantages simultaneously. The chapters on the general principles and specific techniques of inclusive language teaching have also been thoroughly revised to incorporate recent advances in research and practices related to accessibility and universal design.

Since the original publication of our book, a considerable amount of research has been conducted, not only on the potential challenges that students with SpLDs might face in language learning but also on how various instructional approaches and methods can support second language learners with diverse cognitive profiles. While many recommendations for teaching language learners with SpLDs were previously based on teachers’ intuition and prior experience, there is now substantial evidence from the field of second language acquisition research showing that these recommended approaches, such as multi-modal teaching techniques, benefit all language learners, not just those with SpLDs. The updated chapter on language teaching techniques has also been expanded to include detailed recommendations from first language literacy research that can assist in the development of reading and writing skills for second language learners with SpLDs. Not only has the number of studies investigating the language learning processes of students with SpLDs grown in the past decade, but there has also been an increased effort to make assessments fair and equitable for test-takers with SpLDs. The updated chapter on assessing students with SpLDs includes these latest developments and the studies supporting current inclusive assessment designs.

The field of inclusive language teaching and the study of disabilities in language learning are likely to continue expanding and branching into new directions in the future. Our book provides a current and comprehensive overview of how students with SpLDs learn additional languages, the barriers they might face, and how their language acquisition experiences can be enhanced. We hope that it will serve as a valuable resource for teachers, teacher educators, language testers, and academics, and that it will inspire future research and initiatives to make multilingual language education accessible to all.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like (M)othering Labeled Children by María Cioè-Peña.

How to Help Second Language Learners Develop Their Literacy Abilities

We recently published Second Language Literacy Pedagogy by Kimberly Buescher Urbanski. In this post the author explains what led her to write the book.

The seeds of this book began when I was a high school French student. As an avid first language reader and a dedicated second language learner, I found it difficult to use my first language reading ability and my knowledge of French to read authentic French texts. Once I later became a high school and college level French teacher, I found it equally difficult to help my students to do the same. I wanted to find a way to better understand the second language literacy development process and how we can help students. My research as a scholar began during my Master’s after reading Michael Cole’s (1996) work with struggling L1 readers and his solution using Sociocultural Theory. Through many iterations and investigations during my PhD and after, as well as much reading and thinking, I continued to develop my own understanding of how to best help second language learners develop their literacy abilities. In general, my research focuses on needs that are present in pedagogical contexts, draws on theory to inform and guide my efforts to improve the practice of teaching-learning, and returns to test the theory through my research-teaching.

In this book, for my research-teaching, I used Concept-Based Language Instruction from Sociocultural Theory (e.g., Lantolf & Poehner, 2014; Vygotsky, 2012) and a Division-of-Labor Pedagogy (Buescher, 2015). This unique combination allowed me to help students develop their understanding and use of the concepts of literacy such as Foundation, Organization, and Genre while reading authentic French narratives collectively. Each concept had four roles, which were prepared, shared, and then rotated among the students so that at the start, they each had responsibility for one portion of the intricate task of reading, yet gained the full understanding of the text through their collectivity. In addition, they were mediated individually and collectively through the researcher-teacher’s real time attuned mediation. The aim was to address the well-documented curricular gap (e.g. Byrnes et al., 2010) in second language teaching between the introductory courses, focusing mainly on language, and the advanced courses, focusing mainly on reading literature by working with learners aiming to bridge this gap.

If you are interested in learning more about second language literacy development or to learn more about Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory as applied in both small group and full classroom settings, I hope that you will find the detailed pedagogy and results of that pedagogy as helpful guides for your own teaching and researching.

Kimberly (Buescher) Urbanski
Pronouns: she, her
Associate Professor
Department of Applied Linguistics
University of Massachusetts – Boston
kimberly.urbanski@umb.edu

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Second Language Literacy Practices and Language Learning Outside the Classroom by Miho Inaba.

The Past and Present of Grammar Teaching in ELT

This month we published Grammar in ELT and ELT Materials by Graham Burton. In this post the author explains what inspired him to write the book and what he hopes readers will take away from it.

What motivated you to write this book?

It was a combination of things. I started my career in ELT as a teacher but as my background was in linguistics, I always had a somewhat analytical eye with respect to teaching content and was often far more interested in the ‘what’ of teaching rather than the ‘how’. I also worked for years in ELT publishing as an editor and author and saw first hand how decisions on content selection are made. As I gradually moved from teaching and publishing into academia, I found that – particularly in the field of SLA – the focus was far more on questions of how language should be taught and how it can be learned, but the question of which content was appropriate and useful for learners was largely taken for granted. The latter is more commonly addressed in the fields of corpus linguistics, syllabus design and materials analysis, but it seemed that nobody had brought these things together, particularly in the context of ELT grammar. This seemed to make it ripe for an investigation.

Your book is both about the past and present of grammar teaching in ELT. What made you want to focus on the past?

There’s a well-known adage – perhaps a little trite – that says we can’t understand the present without knowing the past. In all kinds of professions and walks of life we come across ‘best practice’ – established ways of doing things that are accepted as being optimal in some way. We tend to be inducted into these ways of working when we enter into a profession, including language teaching, and there’s often not much space for people to question the assumptions underlying them. To understand ELT grammar now, we need to understand better where pedagogical accounts of English grammar come from. Were they ever planned out? Who came up with the familiar list of grammar points, such as relative clauses, tenses, reported speech and so on, which are ubiquitous in teaching materials and classrooms around the world? Who decided at which levels these areas of grammar are typically taught at? And while we’re at it, who decided on the level system generally used in ELT and other languages (ELT generally uses six levels, like the CEFR, but why six?). To address questions like this superficially is to do a disservice to the past, so the research reported on in the book includes an analysis of older coursebooks and grammars in order to track how accounts of English grammar evolved, and also interviews with some of the people who were involved in fixing the current consensus on grammar. I also investigated the views of ‘historical’ figures whose work was critical in the evolution of accounts of English grammar over the last several hundred years. While my intention in the book isn’t primarily to present a historical account, I hope to provide the reader a fuller understanding of the present by situating it in its historical context.

What do you hope people will take away from your book?

While there is both implicit and explicit criticism in the book of the grammar that is used in ELT, I hope that readers will also come away with a sense that the people who were involved in creating the familiar accounts of ELT grammar were highly capable and in many ways did a great job in creating rules and explanations that are understandable to learners and usable in the classroom. This is no mean feat and takes skill and experience. Equally, I hope that the book can contribute to reducing the ‘demonisation of the past’ in linguistics and language teaching, and the assumption that we simply ‘know better’ today. That said, there are all kinds of ways in which current pedagogical grammar accounts can be improved; I focus heavily on how data from learner corpora might be of use, but this is just one possible source of renewal. As most people realise, it’s not easy to effect change within the ELT profession because people are used to the status quo, and to the tried-and-tested approaches they’re familiar with; but I do hope we can start to focus a little more again in applied linguistics on pedagogical grammar and syllabus design. I think it’s clear that the explicit study of grammar in language teaching is – in one form or another – not going away, so we need to be sure that what we teach is appropriate, just as much as how we teach it.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Authenticity across Languages and Cultures edited by Leo Will, Wolfgang Stadler and Irma Eloff.

The Importance of Prioritising Writing in the L2 Chinese Classroom

We recently published Developing Writing Competence in L2 Chinese Classrooms edited by Li Yang and Laura Valentín-Rivera. In this post the editors introduce the book and explain why they chose to focus their research on writing Chinese as a second language.

Introduction to the book

Our edited volume is focused exclusively on writing Chinese as a second language (L2). It provides readers with cutting-edge empirical research and insightful teaching methods and strategies for effectively developing L2 writing competence in L2 Chinese classroom contexts. In particular, each chapter in the volume offers practical, detailed and insightful pedagogical recommendations to (1) assist language teachers, educators,  graduate students and research scholars in making well-informed decisions on how to efficiently provide writing instruction in L2 Chinese and (2) facilitate the implementation of writing-focused activities to promote the construction of meaning, as opposed to reducing writing to the mere practice of specific vocabulary and grammar points.

Focusing on “writing” as the theme

The reasoning of focusing our edited collection on writing was our surprise caused by the fact that writing as a skill is not prioritized when being taught in the L2 classroom, especially considering that writing is a productive skill that should be as prioritized as orality. We consider that this is a pedagogical deficiency that compromises the holistic linguistic growth of L2 learners. Therefore, we aspire that our work provides pedagogical guidance that allows language instructors and academics to further their learners’ abilities as writers, that is, who can independently and collaboratively construct messages that convey complex meanings.

Targeting “Chinese” as the language: 

Originally, we had anticipated focusing on Chinese and Spanish, not only because these two represent our respective languages of research specialty, but also since both languages represent codes that are widely spoken and learned as second languages globally. However, we realized that we could make a greater contribution to the field by dedicating a single collection to one language at a time. Given the limited work available on Chinese settings, we decided to dedicate our time to said language, aspiring to make a greater contribution to the SLA field.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Cross-Linguistic Transfer of Writing Strategies by Karen Forbes.

Connecting SLA Research and Instructed Second Language Acquisition

This month we published Psycholinguistic Approaches to Instructed Second Language Acquisition by Daniel R. Walter. In this post the author reveals the questions answered in the book and who it is for.

As second language acquisition (SLA) researchers and educators have likewise expressed, there is a significant gap between research in SLA and its application by teachers, educators, and curriculum developers. This gap not only exists in terms of the amount of communication and knowledge transmission between researchers and educators, but also how research should be used to inform pedagogical choices. This book is an attempt to remedy some of those issues by making direct connections between the lab and classroom, the researcher and educator, and broad spectrum of psycholinguistic research into language learning and the complex learning environment in which the language learner takes part.

Taking a psycholinguistic approach, this book explores the connections between SLA research and instructed second language acquisition (ISLA). Some of the questions I answer for colleagues at multiple levels of research an instruction include: What is the role of consciousness in second language (L2) learning? What are the underlying psycholinguistic mechanisms that support L2 learning? How can an understanding of these processes impact the way we teach languages, from early L2 learners through post-secondary students? And how can cutting-edge research in psycholinguistics and SLA inform the way we design learning over the course of a curriculum?

In writing this book, I hoped it might find a home not only with fellow SLA researchers, but also with educators at multiple levels; from those teaching in immersion programs in kindergartens and elementary schools, to those teaching at the post-secondary level. And also, that the knowledge contained and presented in this book would be useful for teachers from the first day of a new language class, all the way through the most advanced levels of instruction.

For teachers, it provides clear connections between psycholinguistic research and its implications for the language learning classroom, with straightforward methods and recommendations to support student language learning and development. It can function as an important tool for pedagogues, especially those entrusted with training future teachers and providing professional development to current teachers, who can see how the different activities, with which they already engage inside their classes, apply to the psycholinguistic development of their students.

And finally, I hope this book also impacts the field of (I)SLA in general. First, it could act as a catalyst for more teacher/scholars to make explicit connections between theory, findings, and practice in the space of second language learning. And secondly, and maybe more importantly, for researchers and educators to find places to connect, to bring about a deeper discussion at the personal and professional level, about how those who may lean more towards theory or towards praxis can come together to build a deeper understanding of our applied field of ISLA.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Complexity Perspectives on Researching Language Learner and Teacher Psychology edited by Richard J. Sampson and Richard S. Pinner.

The Importance of Teachers’ Meta-Knowledge of the Lexicon

This month we published Advanced Students’ Knowledge of Vocabulary in a First and Second Language by Monica Karlsson. In this post the author explains why the book is important.

Despite a virtual explosion of research on vocabulary teaching and learning during the last few decades, there still seems to be a general consensus among teachers that whereas most L2 language areas need to be taught explicitly, the learning of vocabulary will take place implicitly, and, for that reason, does not require much time in the second language classroom. Admittedly, students may incidentally acquire knowledge of words while, for instance, reading and listening, learning thus occurring haphazardly, in a non-structured way. This book, however, originates from a strong belief that vocabulary too needs to be addressed explicitly, and that this can be done by providing teachers with more meta-knowledge of different areas of the L2 lexicon.

For instance, based on the results in Chapter 3, dealing with suffixation, it is clear that students would benefit from a teaching syllabus that considered the complexities and frequencies of the stem, the derivative form and the suffix, as well as discussions of the effects of these factors. For idioms, proverbs and multi-word verbs, addressed in Chapters 4 and 5, it would be useful for students to learn that these items of vocabulary are not equal in terms of transparency and commonality, and that these factors most certainly affect to what extent students are able to spot, comprehend, remember and ultimately produce such items correctly (see also Karlsson, 2019). It would also be valuable for learners to know that within the greater lexicon, there are smaller worlds of vocabulary where interconnections are formed in various ways. This phenomenon could, for instance, be exemplified by means of polysemous words and the process of layering, thus enhancing students’ knowledge of the meanings of high-frequency words. Finally, the results in Chapter 7 show that quite a few learners display a great potential for inferring word knowledge when provided with contextual clues. By dedicating time in the L2 classroom to discussions regarding such clues and what conclusions can be drawn based on them, this inherent awareness, most likely dormant in many students, could be enhanced further, even helping low-achievers come to grips with new word meanings much more quickly.

It is my sincere hope that my book will encourage L2 instructors to learn more about the lexicon, theoretically as well as practically, so that they may find the courage to approach vocabulary in a more structured way, and that it will inspire linguists to do more research that will support such a development.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like the author’s previous book, Idiomatic Mastery in a First and Second Language.

How do Individual Differences in L1 Skills Impact L2 Achievement?

This month we published Exploring L1-L2 Relationships by Richard L. Sparks. In this post the author explains how he came to write the book.

My research has addressed L2 learning from a different angle, namely that first language (L1) and L2 learning are similar. Given my background, my approach to research for L2 learning described in the book may not be surprising. I am a L1 educator whose specialties are learning disabilities, reading disabilities (dyslexia), language learning, and assessment. My study of L2 learning, and later L2 aptitude, was serendipitous and began when I encountered US college students with difficulties fulfilling their L2 course requirement. For several years, I conducted studies with secondary level students with L2 learning difficulties, but soon expanded my research to include both high- and low-achieving L2 learners. I speculated that there would be strong connections between students’ L2 achievement and their L1 achievement, an intuition that was quickly validated by my research. These findings encouraged me to continue this line of investigation for the simple reason that despite longstanding research by L1 researchers that had revealed individual differences (IDs) in all aspects of students’ language development by preschool age, there had been little or no research on L1-L2 relationships.

The book brings a new and different approach to the study of L2 learning, one that has been largely neglected by L2 educators and researchers – how individual differences (IDs) in students’ L1 skills impact their L2 aptitude and subsequent L2 achievement. Early on, my late colleague, Leonore Ganschow, and I developed a hypothesis which claimed that L1 and L2 learning have a common foundation – language ability. My book takes the reader on a journey over 30+ years in which our studies, some lasting 3-10 years, provided strong support for our hypothesis about L1-L2 relationships by showing that:

• L2 achievement is reflected in students’ levels of L1 achievement
• L2 aptitude and L2 achievement run along a continuum of very strong to very weak learners, just like L1 achievement
• L2 learning problems are, first and foremost, language learning problems
• L2 aptitude (like L1 ability) is componential and comprised of different language skills
• L2 aptitude and L2 achievement are constrained (moderated) by L1 achievement.
• L2 anxiety is largely determined by students’ levels of L1 achievement, L2 aptitude, and L2 achievement

A valuable section of the book introduces the reader to evidence for the strong relationships between students’ L1 and L2 reading skills in alphabetic languages through the use of the Simple View of Reading model. This research supports L1-L2 connections for reading and demonstrates how to evaluate students’ L1 or L2 reading skills in English and Spanish through the use of accessible assessment tools. Another important contribution for L2 educators is the discussion throughout the book of the concepts of inter-individual and intra-individual differences, culminating in a new, heretofore unpublished chapter in which I review the extensive literature on IDs in L1 ability and provide a tutorial on how to understand IDs in, and the connections between, L1–L2 skills. The tutorial explains that there is variation – often substantial variation – between and within individual learners, and variation in IDs profiles across multiple characteristics. The tutorial also shows how learners’ inter- and intra-individual differences in L1 are manifested in their L2 aptitude and L2 achievement. The book concludes with presentation of my model of future directions for L2 research.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Explorations of Language Transfer by Terence Odlin. 

Why Should Forced Migration be Considered in Research on Language Learning?

This month we published Language Learning and Forced Migration edited by Marte Monsen and Guri Bordal Steien. In this post the editors explain why it’s important to consider forced migration in language learning research.

When you listen to debates about migration in some European countries, you might get the impression that the rest of the world spend their life waiting for an opportunity to pack their bags and penetrate the European borders. As academics living in Norway, we are used to a discourse where adult language learners are portrayed as people who came to Norway voluntarily and need to meet strict Norwegian language requirements to prevent too many others taking the same journey. Researchers on second language acquisition also tend to view second language learning for adults as voluntary, and of course, many people both move across borders and learn new languages voluntarily for work, for studies or even just for the sake of new experiences.

However, many people experience that they are moved across borders with force. In Norway, the immigration policies are strict, so migrants coming to Norway from outside the EU will not be able to settle in Norway unless they are in special need of protection, such as UN resettlement refugees. Adult second language learners in Norway are thus usually forced migrants. In our work, we have met people who have been forced from their homes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, often by means of cruelty beyond our imagination. They have fled on foot to Uganda, where they have lived a rough life in a sort of limbo, as they know their life in Uganda is only temporary. Under these circumstances, many of them have learned new languages through communicating with people “in the streets”, and many of them have large language repertoires. After years in transit, sometimes decades, they have been resettled in Norway, where few or none of their current language resources are valued. Entering many countries in the Global North entails forced attendance of classes to learn the host language, as is also the case for Norway.

The language courses and language tests that the migrants will come up against in Norway and other European countries are based upon the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). A well-known critique of this framework is that it allows policymakers to easily use language proficiency levels as standards and gatekeepers, while the empirical foundation for these standards is weak, and while the descriptions of language proficiency in CEFR initially was developed to measure foreign language learning by students. Well used concepts within SLA that might further guide the language courses, like Selinker’s theories on interlanguage or various models of motivation or investment in language learning, are also based upon knowledge from students or voluntary migrants. This means that a large number of people that attend language classes in the Global North enter a system that lacks knowledge of their language backgrounds, their needs and their lived experience.

Because of the unique situation of refugees and other forced migrants, we believe we need a research agenda that takes into consideration the experiences of people who have been forced to cross borders. That is what we hope to initiate with our book Language Learning and Forced Migration.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Crossing Borders, Writing Texts, Being Evaluated edited by Anne Golden, Lars Anders Kulbrandstad and Lawrence Jun Zhang.

What Affects the Uptake of and Access to Foreign Languages?

This month we published Discourses, Identities and Investment in Foreign Language Learning by Jennifer Martyn. In this post the author explains what inspired her to write the book.

The story of this book goes back to my own history of language learning. Access to other languages at an early age outside of the classroom context stands out as being crucial in not only developing my own plurilingual repertoire, but also in piquing my interest in the way in which language learning is socially situated and a fundamentally political activity that can draw in some whilst excluding others. 

A range of contradictory discourses surround foreign language learning (foreign language learning usually describes classroom-based learning of a language that is not generally used by the speaker in their wider community). At secondary school, languages can be perceived as difficult and inessential, but also assets in the jobs market. Language learning is sometimes also perceived as something that girls and women are better at, an ideology that stubbornly endures.

Although each person has some degree of agency in terms of whether or not they choose to study a language or which language to study, we are all very much influenced, whether we are aware of it or not, by the discourses of language learning that circulate in our communities and across wider society. Languages are talked about and represented in a myriad of ways, all of which mediate our perception of them and our learning experiences. Whether or not one has access to a language, both in the literal and figurative senses, can also determine language learning experience. Some of us have access to other languages from an early age, while others do not. Nor are all languages valued equally in the marketplace and in wider society.

As a socially situated activity, language learning, then, is far from straightforward. Structural barriers, gendered language ideologies, and discourses of elite multilingualism, for instance, coalesce to make language learning seem difficult, unnecessary, uninspiring, or simply ‘not for us’. In the Irish context, there is limited research on sociolinguistic perspectives on foreign language education, particularly at the secondary school level. By employing an ethnographic perspective, this book investigates what young language learners think about language learning, while locating their experiences and beliefs within broader societal discourses and practices. It is hoped that this book contributes to a discussion of the social forces that mediate the learning experience in Ireland and elsewhere.  

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Portraits of Second Language Learners by Chie Muramatsu.

L2 English Use Online and Its Effects on Language Learning

We will soon be publishing Second Language Use Online and its Integration in Formal Language Learning by Andrew D. Moffat. In this post the author explains what inspired the book.

Over a decade of teaching English as a second/foreign language, I was increasingly struck by the range of internet-facilitated, English-language encounters, that my students and the students of colleagues seemed to be having on a regular basis. Kids who were chronic homework-shirkers but avid Call of Duty players disrupting lessons with shouts of “FIRE IN THE HOLE!!”; adults who were shy in class – and not necessarily very ‘advanced’ from a formal perspective – but could be drawn into discussions about their participation in English-language Facebook groups – one chap was a keen amateur astronomer and moved in English-language astronomy spaces online; young adults working in global-facing companies that needed to use English in very ‘real’ situations. I was fascinated by these little windows into the L2 lives of my students, and in particular by the fact that they didn’t seem to do these things to ‘practice their English’ – these were not learning activities per se.

I also reflected on my own Spanish development while living in Spain.  I had some semi-formal one-on-one lessons and spent a fair amount of time doing grammar activities on the beach, but when I was actually interacting within the local community – renting an apartment, grocery shopping at the market, arguing with my bank about unfair account charges – I didn’t feel at all that I was a Spanish ‘learner’ in those moments.  I was just getting things done with my Spanish – pretty important things sometimes, like registering the births of my twin daughters at the Registro Civil. I wasn’t there to learn Spanish, and yet I distinctly remember the word ‘hembra’ – ‘female’ – lodging itself in my long-term memory after that particular experience.

It seemed to me that there was much more to language learning than the language classroom. I certainly felt that I grew the most as a Spanish speaker in those meaning-driven interactions, and I could see that same kind of development in the kinds of students mentioned above – even though I was fortunate enough to be living in an immersion environment and they were not. Could the internet be providing opportunities for the kinds of interactions and exposure more typically associated with ‘live-abroad’ learning? And what should I be doing about it as a language teacher?

These observations and interests came together in the research underlying Second Language Use Online and its Integration in Formal Learning.  The book explores L2 English use online, its effects on language learning, and how classroom practices can and must adapt to embrace learners’ online interactions. It reports on a survey undertaken in partnership with Cambridge University Press that garnered over 10,000 responses from L2 English users in 157 different countries, providing an empirical evidence base of unprecedented scope attesting to online interactions, concerns, and difficulties. This is partnered with a corpus analysis of the Cambridge and Nottingham E-Language Corpus, exploring the idiosyncratic ways in which English is used in different forms of computer-mediated communication. Together these form the basis for a needs analysis for the 21st century, hyper-connected English learner, and a proposal for addressing these needs in the classroom.

I’m hugely grateful to everyone at Multilingual Matters for facilitating the publication of this work, and genuinely proud to be able to contribute a volume to a book series that has provided so much inspiration for my own academic work and development.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Second Language Literacy Practices and Language Learning Outside the Classroom by Miho Inaba.