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This paper presents the root causes of the resistance of mainstream European educational institutions to implementation of minority language programmes (bilingual programmes with both an official/dominant language and an immigrant minority language as media of instruction). Differential treatment of different minority languages in the mainstream educational discourse will be discussed. It will be argued within the conceptual framework of Said's Orientalism, especially as it relates to the construction of the oriental subject, that some minority languages are more legitimate than others vis-à-vis mainstream curricular practices, which allows for different degrees of grievability attributed to potential loss of those languages on both individual and community scales. Ultimately, it will be discussed how the power relations between centre and margin are recirculated in support of educational structures that lead to first language loss among immigrant children, and what conditions would bring about a reconceptualisation of minority language education practices.

Complex noun phrases (CNP) are a major vehicle of academic written discourse (Halliday, 1988; 2004). However, in spite of the view that they pose significant challenges to English language learners, they are often overlooked in preparatory English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs. This mixed methods study aims to investigate to what extent CNP present syntactic parsing challenges for upper-level college EAP students, and whether there is a perceived need for direct instruction in CNP in EAP programs. A special CNP proficiency test was administered to 70 upper-level Ontario college EAP students and a native speaker comparator group, and the results were compared with those obtained from interviews with seven of the test-takers. The results obtained from the statistical analyses and the interviews indicate that CNP are challenging to parse for upper-level EAP students and that direct instruction in CNP may be beneficial for improving their reading comprehension. Some teaching implications of the findings are also addressed.

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