This book describes the experiences of a group of students in Chicago, Illinois, who are attending one of the first Spanish-English dual immersion schools in the United States. The author follows the group during two school years, documenting their Spanish use and proficiency, as well as how their two languages intersect with the ongoing production of their identities.

This book introduces research-based pedagogical practices for supporting and enhancing language development and use in school-based immersion and dual language programs in which a second, foreign, heritage, or indigenous language is used as the medium of subject-matter instruction. Using counterbalanced instruction as the volume’s pedagogical framework, the authors map out the specific pedagogical skill set and knowledge base that teachers in immersion and dual language classrooms need so their students can engage with content taught through an additional language while continuing to improve their proficiency in that language. To illustrate key concepts and effective practices, the authors draw on classroom-based research and include teacher-created examples of classroom application. The following topics are covered in detail: defining characteristics of immersion and dual language programs and features of well-implemented programs strategies to promote language and content integration in curricular planning as well as classroom instruction and performance assessment an instructional model to counterbalance form-focused and content-based instruction scaffolding strategies that support students’ comprehension and production while ensuring continued language development an approach to creating cross-linguistic connections through biliteracy instruction a self-assessment tool for teachers to reflect on their pedagogical growth Also applicable to content and language integrated learning and other forms of content-based language teaching, this comprehensive volume includes graphics to facilitate navigation and provides Resources for Readers and Application Activities at the end of each chapter. The book will be a key resource for preservice and in-service teachers, administrators, and teacher educators.

This volume builds on Fortune and Tedick’s 2008 Pathways to Multilingualism: Evolving Perspectives on Immersion Education and showcases the practice and promise of immersion education through in-depth investigations of program design, implementation practices, and policies in one-way, two-way and indigenous programs. Contributors present new research and reflect on possibilities for strengthening practices and policies in immersion education. Questions explored include: What possibilities for program design exist in charter programs for both two-way and indigenous models? How do studies on learner outcomes lead to possibilities for improvements in program implementation? How do existing policies and practices affect struggling immersion learners and what possibilities can be imagined to better serve such learners? In addressing such questions, the volume invites readers to consider the possibilities of immersion education to enrich the language development and educational achievement of future generations of learners.

This volume distinguishes itself from existing research on materials design, development, and evaluation, and focuses on material mediation in actual processes of teaching and learning, a subject that has been under-researched in the field of applied linguistics and second language education. This edited volume includes diverse perspectives on the roles that materials play in language learner pedagogy. Moving beyond the field of English language teaching, readers will find novel contributions offering a diversity of language teaching contexts, learner populations, and topics in the theory and/or practice of second and foreign language teaching. Chapters explore the ways in which affordances and constraints of classroom materials impact teachers and learners, while at the same time they bring their own (evolving) resources, identities, beliefs, and expertise to modify and adapt the materials to better suit their local language teaching and learning environments. As such, this text is ideal for use as supplemental reading in a wide variety of applied linguistics, second/foreign language education, TESOL, and instructional course design courses.

This edited volume has been compiled in honour of Professor Merrill Swain, one of the most prominent scholars in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) and second language (L2) education. For over four decades, her work has contributed substantially to the knowledge base of the field of applied linguistics, and her ideas have had a significant influence in a range of subfields, including immersion education, mainstream SLA, and sociocultural theory and SLA. The range of topics covered in the book reflects the breadth and depth of Swain’s contributions, expertise and interests. The volume is divided into four parts: immersion education, languaging, sociocultural perspectives on L2 teaching and learning, and developments in language as social action.