In this study, I analyze how 15 world language (WL) preservice and in‐service teachers in the United States negotiated the concept of translanguaging in an online, asynchronous educational linguistics class. Integrating language orientations, an ecological model of language teacher agency, a critical reflection framework, and a critical translingual stance, I describe how participants imagined the role of translanguaging in the WL classroom on their own and with each other in written assignments. Findings indicate that participants’ initial stances on translanguaging were dependent upon several contextual factors, including linguistic background and contact with multilingual students in their own classrooms. Meso, macro, and micro constraints of standards, ideologies, and school environments were explored, and participants’ language orientations included (trans)language(ing)‐as‐problem, ‐resource, and ‐right. Continued exposure to translanguaging during the course led to shifts even among the more resistant participants from viewing translanguaging as a problem in the WL class to a potentially powerful resource and right. I discuss how language teacher educators can encourage this imaginative speculation, with the important caveat that truly critical, equitable, decolonially oriented translanguaging stances require extended exposure to and additional resources on the topic.
{"title":"From problem to right: Imaginative speculation on translanguaging in the world language classroom","authors":"Michele Back","doi":"10.1111/modl.13016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.13016","url":null,"abstract":"In this study, I analyze how 15 world language (WL) preservice and in‐service teachers in the United States negotiated the concept of translanguaging in an online, asynchronous educational linguistics class. Integrating language orientations, an ecological model of language teacher agency, a critical reflection framework, and a critical translingual stance, I describe how participants imagined the role of translanguaging in the WL classroom on their own and with each other in written assignments. Findings indicate that participants’ initial stances on translanguaging were dependent upon several contextual factors, including linguistic background and contact with multilingual students in their own classrooms. Meso, macro, and micro constraints of standards, ideologies, and school environments were explored, and participants’ language orientations included (trans)language(ing)‐as‐problem, ‐resource, and ‐right. Continued exposure to translanguaging during the course led to shifts even among the more resistant participants from viewing translanguaging as a problem in the WL class to a potentially powerful resource and right. I discuss how language teacher educators can encourage this imaginative speculation, with the important caveat that truly critical, equitable, decolonially oriented translanguaging stances require extended exposure to and additional resources on the topic.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144792264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Based on recent discussions on language and decoloniality and employing an ethnographic approach, this article examines a teacher education program in “primary intercultural education” at a public university in the Southern Peruvian Andes, in a context with a majority Quechua‐speaking population and youth with diverse bilingual trajectories. The goal of this article is to complexify the categories of coloniality and decoloniality of language by studying a reflection‐based action conducted by grassroots Quechua activists and teacher educators, which involves developing an academic Quechua register with the aim of empowering students as authors of their texts in the Indigenous language. These activists assume their intervention as a decolonial and critical strategy to neutralize hierarchies with respect to the oppression of the Spanish language, deracialize mother tongue education, and incorporate a social justice approach to counteract a depoliticized view of interculturalism. However, simultaneously, these activists promote a neat, autonomous, and disembodied Quechua; disfavor translanguaging practices; and erase the signifier of bilingualism, reproducing the coloniality of language and disempowering many of the students. These results confirm the need for further cycles of critical reflection when developing reflection‐based actions.
{"title":"Disentangling (de)colonial teacher education in the Andes: Dilemmas and possibilities","authors":"Virginia Zavala","doi":"10.1111/modl.13012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.13012","url":null,"abstract":"Based on recent discussions on language and decoloniality and employing an ethnographic approach, this article examines a teacher education program in “primary intercultural education” at a public university in the Southern Peruvian Andes, in a context with a majority Quechua‐speaking population and youth with diverse bilingual trajectories. The goal of this article is to complexify the categories of coloniality and decoloniality of language by studying a reflection‐based action conducted by grassroots Quechua activists and teacher educators, which involves developing an academic Quechua register with the aim of empowering students as authors of their texts in the Indigenous language. These activists assume their intervention as a decolonial and critical strategy to neutralize hierarchies with respect to the oppression of the Spanish language, deracialize mother tongue education, and incorporate a social justice approach to counteract a depoliticized view of interculturalism. However, simultaneously, these activists promote a neat, autonomous, and disembodied Quechua; disfavor translanguaging practices; and erase the signifier of bilingualism, reproducing the coloniality of language and disempowering many of the students. These results confirm the need for further cycles of critical reflection when developing reflection‐based actions.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"148 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144766096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shawna M. Carroll, Mimi Masson, Robert Grant, Eric Keunne
In this article, we critically examine the Ontario, Canada secondary French as a second language (FSL) curriculum to unpack the ways it both resists and perpetuates colonial, racist, and oppressive discourses. By engaging in this analysis, we aim to inspire language teacher educators to envision and critically engage with alternative, anticolonial, feminist frameworks that challenge dominant paradigms by developing critical reflection, contextual awareness, and fostering equity‐minded language teacher education (LTE). We encourage a shift from merely recognizing inequities to actively reimagining curriculum and pedagogical practices that promote inclusivity, equity, and justice in LTE. To launch our inquiry, we collaboratively examined the curriculum in NVivo to uncover what is said or not said using critical discourse analysis anchored within a feminist anticolonial framework. Findings reveal that, although the curriculum advocates for inclusion and diversity in its introduction, the document superficially includes diversity throughout without white settler accountability and avoids diverging from a liberal multiculturalism framework, allowing white settler privilege to remain intact. Discussion of the findings examines the implications of these illusions of inclusion and the necessity of critically reflecting on oppressive, settler colonial systems and pedagogies in language education and LTE.
{"title":"It's (in)escapable: Critically reflecting on a second language curriculum in a settler colonial context","authors":"Shawna M. Carroll, Mimi Masson, Robert Grant, Eric Keunne","doi":"10.1111/modl.13010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.13010","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we critically examine the Ontario, Canada secondary French as a second language (FSL) curriculum to unpack the ways it both resists and perpetuates colonial, racist, and oppressive discourses. By engaging in this analysis, we aim to inspire language teacher educators to envision and critically engage with alternative, anticolonial, feminist frameworks that challenge dominant paradigms by developing critical reflection, contextual awareness, and fostering equity‐minded language teacher education (LTE). We encourage a shift from merely recognizing inequities to actively reimagining curriculum and pedagogical practices that promote inclusivity, equity, and justice in LTE. To launch our inquiry, we collaboratively examined the curriculum in NVivo to uncover what is said or not said using critical discourse analysis anchored within a feminist anticolonial framework. Findings reveal that, although the curriculum advocates for inclusion and diversity in its introduction, the document superficially includes diversity throughout without white settler accountability and avoids diverging from a liberal multiculturalism framework, allowing white settler privilege to remain intact. Discussion of the findings examines the implications of these illusions of inclusion and the necessity of critically reflecting on oppressive, settler colonial systems and pedagogies in language education and LTE.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144748172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Languages shape worldviews, inform teacher values and behaviors, and are not disconnected from local political, sociocultural, and ecological contexts. For Indigenous peoples, language, land, and culture are inseparable. In contrast, English carries a human‐centered, colonial, imperialist, and assimilationist legacy that persists in language teacher education. With the unabated global spread of English, Indigenous and heritage languages—and their speakers—have been disenfranchised, minoritized, or subjected to genocide through cultural and linguistic imperialism and white epistemological supremacy. This article contends the human‐centered and imperialist worldview transmitted through English exemplifies colonialingualism. Colonialingualism upholds colonial legacies, imperial mindsets, and inequitable practices in both pre‐service and in‐service language teacher education. Examples include the dominance of Eurocentric or colonial languages, frameworks, methodologies, and approaches, as well as the marginalization of Indigenous epistemologies and pedagogies. Colonialingual classroom environments perpetuate narratives of epistemic and linguistic superiority, racism, assimilation, and further marginalize Indigenous, heritage, and minoritized language speakers. Moreover, language teacher education often neglects the relational connections between language and place‐based knowledges—crucial in confronting today's climate and humanitarian crises. To address this, I argue that an epistemic (un)learning of the “epistemological error” is required to enable critical reflection and equitable validation of all languages and knowledge systems, including those Indigenous and minoritized, in language teacher education. I illustrate how a biocultural heritage language pedagogy can support reflexivity and action‐oriented epistemic (un)learning, challenge colonialingualism, and foster place‐based transepistemic learning in the Canadian context. Transepistemic language education offers a complementary—not competing—framework to engage a contextual, decolonial, pluriversal sharing of languages and knowledges for more equitable language teacher education. As such, a colonialingual approach to language teacher education is offered to facilitate epistemic (un)learning processes.
{"title":"Transepistemic language teacher education: A framework for plurilingualism, translanguaging, and challenging colonialingualism","authors":"Paul J. Meighan","doi":"10.1111/modl.13020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.13020","url":null,"abstract":"Languages shape worldviews, inform teacher values and behaviors, and are not disconnected from local political, sociocultural, and ecological contexts. For Indigenous peoples, language, land, and culture are inseparable. In contrast, English carries a human‐centered, colonial, imperialist, and assimilationist legacy that persists in language teacher education. With the unabated global spread of English, Indigenous and heritage languages—and their speakers—have been disenfranchised, minoritized, or subjected to genocide through cultural and linguistic imperialism and white epistemological supremacy. This article contends the human‐centered and imperialist worldview transmitted through English exemplifies colonialingualism. Colonialingualism upholds colonial legacies, imperial mindsets, and inequitable practices in both pre‐service and in‐service language teacher education. Examples include the dominance of Eurocentric or colonial languages, frameworks, methodologies, and approaches, as well as the marginalization of Indigenous epistemologies and pedagogies. Colonialingual classroom environments perpetuate narratives of epistemic and linguistic superiority, racism, assimilation, and further marginalize Indigenous, heritage, and minoritized language speakers. Moreover, language teacher education often neglects the relational connections between language and place‐based knowledges—crucial in confronting today's climate and humanitarian crises. To address this, I argue that an epistemic (un)learning of the “epistemological error” is required to enable critical reflection and equitable validation of all languages and knowledge systems, including those Indigenous and minoritized, in language teacher education. I illustrate how a biocultural heritage language pedagogy can support reflexivity and action‐oriented epistemic (un)learning, challenge colonialingualism, and foster place‐based transepistemic learning in the Canadian context. Transepistemic language education offers a complementary—not competing—framework to engage a contextual, decolonial, pluriversal sharing of languages and knowledges for more equitable language teacher education. As such, a colonialingual approach to language teacher education is offered to facilitate epistemic (un)learning processes.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144748174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Guidelines for authors submitting qualitative research studies","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/modl.13017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.13017","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"282 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144669826","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"THE ISSUE: The intersection of policy, politics, and language education","authors":"Kristin J. Davin","doi":"10.1111/modl.13001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.13001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"61 1","pages":"428-430"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Issue Information ‐ Copyright Page","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/modl.12854","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12854","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"7 1","pages":"496-496"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Issue Information ‐ TOC","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/modl.12853","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12853","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"18 1","pages":"299-299"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The political challenges of language policy: Top‐down and bottom‐up","authors":"Elana Shohamy","doi":"10.1111/modl.13003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.13003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"46 1","pages":"454-458"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513296","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lexical proficiency in a second language (L2) has long been effectively assessed through the measurement of various lexical indices, or textual characteristics that act as observable indicators of such conceptual categories as lexical richness, diversity, sophistication, and fluency. While many studies have established links between these lexical characteristics and levels of overall language proficiency, languages other than L2 English rarely feature in such research. The current study addresses this gap by investigating a less commonly studied language, Russian, while paying specific attention to the operationalization of proficiency through an American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages Proficiency Guidelines‐based procedure. The study analyzes eight lexical proficiency indices in a corpus of essays written by learners of Russian at different proficiency levels. Our analyses demonstrate that seven indices (i.e., word length in letters, word length in syllables, word length in morphemes, unique tokens per text, unique lemmas per text, and measure of textual lexical diversity for tokens and for lemmas) changed significantly with the increase in proficiency. Only one index—the proportion of content versus function words—did not reliably track the increase in proficiency. The findings confirm the usefulness of lexical proficiency measures in tracking lexical development in L2 Russian and increase the repertoire of these indices for L2 Russian.
{"title":"Assessing lexical proficiency in Russian as a second language using indices of lexical sophistication, diversity, and fluency","authors":"Olesya Kisselev, Mihail Kopotev, Anton Vakhranev","doi":"10.1111/modl.12998","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12998","url":null,"abstract":"Lexical proficiency in a second language (L2) has long been effectively assessed through the measurement of various lexical indices, or textual characteristics that act as observable indicators of such conceptual categories as lexical richness, diversity, sophistication, and fluency. While many studies have established links between these lexical characteristics and levels of overall language proficiency, languages other than L2 English rarely feature in such research. The current study addresses this gap by investigating a less commonly studied language, Russian, while paying specific attention to the operationalization of proficiency through an American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages Proficiency Guidelines‐based procedure. The study analyzes eight lexical proficiency indices in a corpus of essays written by learners of Russian at different proficiency levels. Our analyses demonstrate that seven indices (i.e., word length in letters, word length in syllables, word length in morphemes, unique tokens per text, unique lemmas per text, and measure of textual lexical diversity for tokens and for lemmas) changed significantly with the increase in proficiency. Only one index—the proportion of content versus function words—did not reliably track the increase in proficiency. The findings confirm the usefulness of lexical proficiency measures in tracking lexical development in L2 Russian and increase the repertoire of these indices for L2 Russian.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"134 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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