Wei Li

• PhD, MA, BA, DipEd.
• Chair at University College London

The articles in this special issue of Learning and Instruction emphasize four major research areas that have developed in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) education: (1) the role of translanguaging practices in CLIL classrooms, (2) the use of technological resources to create a technology-mediated translanguaging space in CLIL classr...

This study investigated the impact of reading statements in a second language (L2) versus the first language (L1) on core knowledge confusion (CKC), superstition, and conspiracy beliefs. Previous research on the Foreign Language Effect (FLE) suggests that using an L2 elicits less intense emotional reactions, promotes rational decision-making, reduc...

Despite the widespread use of mobile digital devices such as iPads in teaching and learning, there is little research on the ways in which content teachers make use of the technological affordances of the iPad to achieve pedagogical goals in bilingual/multilingual classrooms. This article adopts translanguaging as an analytical perspective to explo...

This study investigates how L2 proficiency contributes to creativity in relation to personality among 205 young adolescent English-as-a-foreign-language learners from rural China. Participants completed the Cambridge A2 Key for Schools English Test to assess English proficiency, the Chinese Big Five Personality Inventory to evaluate personality tra...

This study consists of a conceptual part and an empirical part. The conceptual part proposed an Integrated Task-mediated Cognitive-Affective Model of L2 Writing. The empirical study tested this model by examining the effect of task complexity (TC) on second language (L2) learners’ affective responses and writing performance, and how these effects w...

The Adaptive Control Hypothesis and the Control Process Model propose that bilingual language use in different interactional contexts requires control processes that can adapt in different ways to linguistic demands. This study explored the effects of language experience on cognitive flexibility and inhibition among 41 Chinese–English bilingual adu...

Drawing on the control-value theory, the current study aims to construe a mediation model consisting of language attitude, foreign language learning emotions, and foreign language achievement and testify the model among four independent samples of the 7th and 8th graders from urban and rural regions of China (n1=588, n2=312, n3=617, n4=304). Indepe...

This study demonstrates how tribalism and nationalism, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, have given rise to the enregisterment of a cultural discursive practice – dui (怼) – on Chinese social media. Based on a sample of social media posts collected through a combination of ‘noticing’ and systematic data scanning and archiving over a month, our a...

Purpose and research question This review investigates the influence of the foreign language effect (FLE) on moral decision-making, risk aversion, and causality perception. Recent research indicates that bilinguals employ different decision-making strategies according to the language in use (first vs. second language). Methodology Following the Pr...

近十年来，二语学界掀起了情绪研究热潮，不断从积极心理学、教育心理学等相邻学科引入新的概念、话题、理论和研究方法。本文首先回顾了二语学习情绪研究的三大发展阶段和主要理论，梳理出五项主要研究内容：1)情绪的概念探索与测量；2)情绪与其他变量的关系；3)情绪与二语学业成绩的关系；4)情绪的起因；5)情绪的发展变化。进而从认识论和方法论出发，发现现有研究存在诸多不足，如对情绪的理解过于笼统、缺乏语言学视角下的情绪理论、理论未与信息化外语教学对接、研究工具多为脱离情境的自陈式工具等。最后，针对以上问题提出相应建议，呼吁未来研究着重考察情绪对二语学习过程的影响、情绪互动与传染、情绪调节和干预、任务型教学环境下的情绪以及认知-情绪互动等。 Abstract: Second/foreign langua...

Scales developed/modified and validated by Dr. Chengchen Li and her colleagues.

The study examined how L2 engagement is associated with students’ general life satisfaction, a core element of well-being. A total of 1,109 7th-grade EFL learners from a rural secondary school in China completed a measure of life satisfaction (family satisfaction, environment satisfaction, academic satisfaction, school satisfaction, freedom satisfa...

This article seeks to address the ever-expanding and shifting communicative demands of ‘liquid modernity’ by focussing on two key issues: the need to reconceptualize language and communication as a consequence of the diversification of media and resources people draw upon to meet these demands; and the need for a new analytical framework to capture...

Underpinned by Hayes’ (1996) cognition-affect model of writing within the background of the positive psychology movement, the study investigated how cognitive abilities and emotions contribute to second language writing proficiency. A total of 1036 EFL learners from a junior secondary school in China participated in two cognitive tests for working...

I first heard of the term ‘Chinglish’ when I was at Baiduizi (白堆子) Beijing Foreign Languages School in the 1970s, through Janet Adams’ book, From Chinglish to English . The book contained 60 short dialogues in simple American English. It was meant to be teaching us colloquial English, compared to, I suppose, the textbook English written by Chinese...

In this study, we examine how mobility and on-going changes in sociocultural contexts impact family language policy (FLP) in the UK. Using a questionnaire and involving 470 transnational families across the UK, our study provides a descriptive analysis of different family language practices in England and establishes how attitudes influence the dif...

A key pedagogical goal in any classroom is to engage students in learning. This study examines how an English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) teacher employs available resources to engage his students in the classroom for promoting participation, keeping the lesson moving forward and meeting the pedagogical goals. The data for this study is based on a int...

This invited colloquium, organized by Shaofeng Li (Florida State University, USA) and Matthew T. Prior (Arizona State University, USA), took place on 20 March 2023, at the annual meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Portland, Oregon, USA. The colloquium consisted of an introduction to the session, four paper presenta...

Previous research has shown that bilingual speakers may be more tolerant to ambiguity, they might perceive situations of ambiguity more interesting, challenging and desirable (e.g., Dewaele & Li, 2013). To our knowledge, no data is available addressing the question whether the language in use can have an effect on the personality trait of tolerance...

Emotions have received scant attention in L2 writing research except anxiety, leaving their role largely unclear. This study was designed mainly to examine the contributions of anxiety, enjoyment, and boredom to writing achievement. We also aimed to develop and validate instruments to measure foreign language writing enjoyment and boredom. Two sub-...

The idea of translanguaging has disrupted much of the thinking in bilingual education. A common misunderstanding, however, is that translanguaging was intended to be a language teaching strategy. This article seeks to explore what a translanguaging approach to language teaching entails, with specific reference to the education of minoritized and ra...

The last few years have witnessed exponential growth in research output within the field of language aptitude. With contributions from an international team of leading experts, this volume provides the most comprehensive, authoritative and up-to-date overview of developments in language aptitude theory and practice. It addresses central and newly e...

[To appear in Wen, Z., Skehan, P. & Sparks, R. (edited), Language aptitude theory and practice. Cambridge: CUP Press. 2022] An aptitude model for translation and interpreting: Insights from translanguaging theory Han Lili, Wen Zhisheng, Zi-yu Lin & Li Wei Abstract The past two decades have witnessed translanguaging theory (Li, 2018) making its fo...

The last few years have witnessed exponential growth in research output within the field of language aptitude. With contributions from an international team of leading experts, this volume provides the most comprehensive , authoritative and up-to-date overview of developments in language aptitude theory and practice. It addresses central and newly...

Adopting a language other than the first as the medium of instruction in teaching mathematics can create significant problems for students’ mathematical learning. However, there is little research on the ways in which bi/multilingual mathematics teachers can make use of diverse multilingual and multimodal resources to keep students engaged in learn...

Translanguaging refers to the dynamic meaning-making process whereby multilingual language users make full use of their communicative repertoires by crossing the boundaries between named languages and other semiotic and modal resources ( García and Li 2014 ). Director Bong Joon-ho is well-known for utilising such border-crossing practices in his fi...

For me, language policy and planning (LPP) is both a field of practical enquiry and a field of theoretical enquiry. As a practical field, LPP is about actions; actions that are taken by various agents and agencies on the structure, use and acquisition of language. As a theoretical field, LPP critically assesses these actions and further our underst...

Translanguaging practice has become increasingly popular in individuals' lives, particularly in online communication among young people. A body of existing research has described translanguaging practice and its potential functions, but few studies have systematically examined individuals' attitudes towards translanguaging practices. Therefore, thi...

This article approaches translanguaging from the perspective of performance as theorised in anthropological and sociological studies. Drawing on the key argument that every facet of social reality is a performance, and social interaction is based on tacit agreement among all the participants, the article aims to make sense of a key participant’s ma...

Does the language we speak affect the way we think? This Element provides a synthesis of contemporary research on the interplay between language and cognition in speakers of two or more languages and examines variables deemed to impact bilingual acquisition and conceptualization of language-specific thinking patterns during L2 learning. An overview...

Mplus Syntax in Li, C., & Wei, L. (2022). Anxiety, enjoyment, and boredom in language learning amongst junior secondary students in rural China: How do they contribute to L2 achievement? Studies in Second Language Acquisition. Published Ahead of Print. DOI: 10.1017/S0272263122000031

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions Can learning additional languages affect what we perceive to be similar events? The current study explores the impact of learning a second language (L2) and a third language (L3) on how motion is categorized in functional Cantonese–English–Japanese multilinguals. Specifically, it examines the extent to...

Translanguaging has opened up spaces to recognize the dynamic multilingualism of students in classrooms taught in dominant languages, and problematized concepts such as ‘additive bilingualism’. This article aims to further explore two issues that remain little understood. First, translanguaging is often seen as simply the acknowledgement or use of...

This study explored how bilingual code-switching habits affect cognitive shifting and inhibition. Habitual code-switching from 31 Mandarin-English bilingual adults were collected through the Language and Social Background Questionnaire (Anderson et al., 2018) and the Bilingual Switching Questionnaire (Rodriguez-Fornells et al., 2012). All participa...

Following the multilingual trend in language education, translanguaging advocates active use of multiple languages and other meaning-making resources in a dynamic and integrated way in teaching and learning. When it comes to foreign language education, translanguaging advocates a view that the languages the learners already have should and can play...

Vivian Cook passed away on 10 December 2021, aged 81 years. Our last conversation was in October and he was very much looking forward to the proof of his latest book The Language of the English Street Sign. We had talked about the book over quite a long time and he showed me various versions of different chapters. As a multicompetent linguist and l...

Building on the control-value theory, the present study examined the independent and joint predictive effects of three emotions, enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom, on L2 achievement over time. The participants of the study were a group of junior secondary English learners in rural China, a population that has hitherto never featured in L2 learning re...

Emotions are now considered critical elements of a successful education. In English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, there are many challenges for teachers to deal with. Hence, it is necessary to take their emotions into consideration. Despite many studies in this area, researching teachers’ positive mood, hope, and academic buoyancy has been l...

Following the multilingual trend in language education, translanguaging advocates active use of multiple languages and other meaning-making resources in a dynamic and integrated way in teaching and learning. When it comes to foreign language education, translanguaging advocates a view that the languages the learners already have should and can play...

en This critical essay aims to assess the linguistic ideologies regarding the Chinese writing system by locating them in historical and diasporic contexts and the new digital communication space. Drawing data from a long-term and ongoing digital ethnography of online communication and creative Sinographs in the global Chinese diaspora, it analyses...

Language play is playing with the rules of language for fun. This article is one of the first attempts at providing an overview of the traditional genres and current trends of language play in and with Chinese, a topic that has received relatively little attention in English. We explore the specific aspects of the Chinese language that are suscepti...

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions The aim of this study is to examine whether the complete (re-)activation of interface domains in the heritage language (HL) is possible or whether interfaces are likely to preserve features typical for the HL even after many years of residing in the country of origin. Design/methodology/approach We pr...

Following Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the authors of this article reject the type of “abyssal thinking” that erases the existence of counter-hegemonic knowledges and lifeways, adopting instead the “from the inside out” perspective that is required for thinking constructively about the language and education of racialized bilinguals. On the basis of...

Recent studies on English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) classroom interaction have begun to look at the role of translanguaging as a pedagogical practice in supporting participants to exploit multilingual and multimodal resources to facilitate content teaching and learning. The present study contributes to this growing body of literature by focusing on...

Can learning a second language (L2) redirect what we perceive to be similar events? This study investigated how Cantonese-English bilinguals categorized and processed spontaneous motion when the access to language ranged from maximal to minimal. In Experiment 1, participants verbalized the target events in either Cantonese or English right before m...

Despite the widespread use of mobile digital devices such as iPads in teaching and learning, there is little research on the ways in which content teachers make use of the technological affordances of the iPad to achieve pedagogical goals in bilingual/multilingual classrooms. This article adopts translanguaging as an analytical perspective to explo...

The Somali community in Britain has been portrayed as largely homogenous and rather problematic, unwilling to integrate into mainstream British society, a perception that is reinforced by the media and government policies. The government policies tend to ignore the internal diversity and change that the community is experiencing. Drawing on data fr...

This is a personal reflection, upon reading the articles in this special issue, on race, nationality and language from a Manchu-Chinese immigrant in the UK's perspective. Through a number of personal stories, I discuss my own experiences with Chineseness on the margins. I also want to explore ways of taking the discussion and research forward in fu...

In this editorial introduction, we outline the key conceptualisations and overarching questions of this collection of studies on the changing faces of the transnational communities in Britain. Using the nexus of migration and language as our critical lens, we examine the internal diversities within the transnational communities in Britain, evident...

The current study explores how multilingual speakers with three typologically different languages (satellite-framed, verb-framed and equipollent-framed) encode and gauge event similarity in the domain of caused motion. Specifically, it addresses whether, and to what extent, the acquisition of an L2-English and an L3-Japanese reconstructs the lexica...

Recent studies on classroom discourse have challenged the traditional classroom role set and emphasised equal contributions from the participants and the emergence of knowledge through active participation. Co-learning emphasises the process in which teachers and students attempt to adapt to one another’s behaviour and learn from each other in orde...

The present study contributes to a well-established line of applied linguistics research in educational contexts on how teachers can make connections between their students' out-of-school knowledge and experiences and what they learn in the classroom by examining a hitherto under-explored context, namely English-medium-instruction (EMI) mathematics...

Recent studies on classroom discourse have challenged the traditional classroom role set and emphasised equal contributions from the participants and the emergence of knowledge through active participation. Co-learning emphasises the process in which teachers and students attempt to adapt to one another's behaviour and learn from each other in orde...

This article revisits the application of Social Network Analysis to the study of language maintenance and language shift in the Chinese community in Britain. An approach that focuses more on individual variations, including variable behaviours by the same speaker in different contexts, is proposed. The approach is illustrated with new data from Chi...

Recent studies on English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) classroom interaction have begun to look at the role of translanguaging as a pedagogical practice in supporting participants to exploit multilingual and multimodal resources to facilitate content teaching and learning. The present study contributes to this growing body of literature by focussing on...

This introductory paper offers a framing of writing (in) the city as a way of making and knowing cities. We link individual contributions in this collection to earlier research that has examined displayed discourse in urban spaces or considered writing as a metaphor for studying cities.

The present study contributes to a well-established line of applied linguistics research in educational contexts on how teachers can make connections between their students’ out-of-school knowledge and experiences and what they learn in the classroom by examining a hitherto under-explored context, namely English-medium-instruction (EMI) mathematics...

This article is an ethnography of an investigation of an under-explored sociolinguistic phenomenon, namely handwritten signs in public spaces, against a context of urban regeneration and socio-cultural transformation. These signs are a subset of urban communicates that involve handwriting, lettering or the painting of letters and text using differe...

This paper analyses Kongish Daily, a Facebook page that trans-scripts local news in Hong Kong into a creative and dynamic mix of Cantonese in traditional Chinese characters, Romanisation and made-up characters, simplified Chinese, pinyin, English, Hong Kong English, other phonetic symbols, emoji and other signs and images. We trace the origin of th...

The Interface Hypothesis (IH) postulates that interface structures are potentially vulnerable to incomplete acquisition in the end-state L2. Two plausible explanations have been suggested as possible causes of the L2 divergence at the interface: (1) the interaction between two competing grammatical systems, and (2) differences between monolinguals...

Gunther Kress died of a heart attack on June 20, 2019 in Rome, Italy. He was on his way from the hotel to the A-Mode (Approaches to Multimodal Digital Environments: from theories to practices) conference venue to give his plenary speech when he fell ill and passed away later that day in hospital. The world lost a leading thinker in social semiotics...

Can ‘non‐native’ speakers of English innovate in English? This seemly simple question bothers sociolinguists and sociolinguistic research because we feel uncertain whether the ‘inventive’ productions by ‘non‐native’ speakers should be treated as evidence of creativity or mistakes. This article aims to tackle this question from a translanguaging per...

Cooper’s (1989) LPP framework focuses on ‘who’ the policy planner is and ‘who’ implements the policy to ‘whom.’ These are particularly significant factors in a highly centralized education system such as China’s, where the effect of different individuals as actors in LPP remains largely unexplored. This article examines the controversy around the p...

This article offers an alternative view of mobile learning, moving away from a focus on technology to an emphasis on the mobilization of multiple resources by the learner and the interactivity between the learner and the environment. We present an analysis of an episode of self-directed online learning by a multilingual learner using the perspectiv...

This paper seeks to address the question how people go about intercultural differences in an institutional setting which aims to mediate between the socio-legal system and the ‘outsiders’ of the system, i.e. ordinary citizens, through an investigation of professional interactions between a legal advisor and her clients of Eastern European backgroun...

The original discussion of Translanguaging as a pedagogical practice by Williams and Baker included modalities of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. As it has been developed as a theoretical concept, Translanguaging embraces the multimodal social semiotic view that linguistic signs are part of a wider repertoire of modal resources that sign...

Languages differ typologically in motion event encoding (Talmy, 2000). Furthermore, the cross-linguistic variations in lexicalization modulate cognition in a dynamic and task-dependent manner (Slobin, 1996a). This study aims to investigate whether early Cantonese–English bilinguals behave differently from monolinguals in each language when lexicali...

This article explores language learning as a process of translanguaging and of cultural translation. We draw examples from a sociolinguistic ethnography of translanguaging practices in a karate club in east London, UK. Formulaic Japanese is taught as part of karate techniques, practised as the language of performance and rituals and valued as the k...

As a way of concluding this thematic issue, we have created a space for our contributors to read each other’s articles and to reflect on the main theme, i.e. translating culture in global times. We invited their response to four questions that we believe are not only central to the aims of the special issue, but also encourage further dialogues on...

The volume offers introductions to the notions of competence plurilingue (Véronique Castellotti), translanguaging (Li Wei) and Tertiärsprachendidaktik (Britta Hufeisen) in which the authors, from their respective standpoints, will comment on fundamental differences and possible synergies. We call for theoretical papers or empirical studies in the a...

The purpose of this article is to explore the role of embodied repertories in teaching and learning in a multi-ethnic karate club in East London and its implications for language teaching and learning. We do so through the lens of translanguaging and apply the concept of translanguaging space where diverse semiotic systems are integrated and orches...

This article discusses a relatively under-explored phenomenon that we call Tranßcripting – writing, designing and digitally generating new scripts with elements from different scriptal and semiotic systems. The data are drawn from examples of such scripts created by multilingual Chinese users in everyday online social interaction. We analyse the dy...

This article discusses a relatively under-explored phenomenon that we call Tranßcripting - writing, designing and digitally generating new scripts with elements from different scriptal and semiotic systems. The data are drawn from examples of such scripts created by multilingual Chinese users in everyday online social interaction. We analyse the dy...

This article argues that imagination plays a key role in whether and how members of transnational families individually and collectively maintain or relinquish their heritage languages and adopt other languages as part of their multilingual repertoires. Imagination is defined here as the vision of where and what one might be or become at some futur...

The primary aim of this article is to put forward an argument that imagination plays a key role in whether and how members of transnational families individually and collectively maintain or relinquish their heritage languages and adopt other languages as part of their multilingual repertoires. Imagination is defined here as the vision of where and...

During the first half of 2017, four scholars who know English‐medium instruction (EMI) well and view it from different perspectives took part in a round‐robin exchange. The forum contributors answered six sets of questions on aspects of EMI: defining terms; learning English in an EMI environment; the political or policy framework; learning a subjec...

In this article, we present an analytical approach that focuses on how transnational and translingual learners mobilize their multilingual, multimodal, and multisemiotic repertoires, as well as their learning and work experiences, as resources in language learning. The approach is that of translanguaging , which seeks to push the boundaries not onl...

Book synopsis: The word ‘diaspora’ has leapt from its previously confined use – mainly concerned with the dispersion of Jews, Greeks, Armenians and Africans away from their natal homelands – to cover the cases of many other ethnic groups, nationalities and religions. But this ‘horizontal’ scattering of the word to cover the mobility of many groups...

This article seeks to develop Translanguaging as a theory of language and discuss the theoretical motivations behind and the added values of the concept. I contextualize Translanguaging in the linguistic realities of the 21st century, especially the fluid and dynamic practices that transcend the boundaries between named languages, language varietie...

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The main research question we seek to answer in the present study is: "What effect does reduced input in the non-dominant and dispreferred language have on the acquisition of Russian gender morphology by a bilingual Turkish-Russian child: Is it still sufficient for its monolingual-like development or...