Language reflects how people think and behave in their culture. To have successful conversations, both language use and cultural awareness should be taken into consideration. Undeniably, Japanese grammar is different from Thai making it even harder for Thai learners to have fluent and appropriate conversations in the Japanese language. In the…

Bilingual education has steadily risen in the United States since the Supreme Court case of "Lau vs. Nichols in 1974." Despite this proliferation of bilingual programs, notable challenges and discrepancies exist for bilingual programs devoted to Asian languages and Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. The rising…

The 2024 Central States Conference was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota on March 14-16. This year's theme, Reclaim Your Joy!, reflects the choice we make every day as educators to bring the joy of acquiring a language to our students. Even though the last several years have been fraught with challenges, we are finding ways to bring back the joy into…

Japanese EFL international students may experience high levels of apprehension when communicating in English due to their culture, educational background, attitudes towards the role of English in their society, and lack of opportunities to practice speaking in English. Although the students in this study had studied English before joining the…

Language immersion education uses a non-English language for a significant portion of instruction. One goal is to develop bilingual students, which many argue provides cognitive benefits. Using data from school choice lotteries, I estimate the effect of random assignment to a language immersion school on achievement in math and reading. Winning…

Language immersion programs, which are a form of bilingual education, are shaped by multiple factors, including the specific characteristics of the region, the language, the community and the learners, as well as national and regional policies on language education. While the underdeveloped production skills of immersion students have been…

Using data from seven cohorts of language immersion lottery applicants in a large, urban school district, we estimate the causal effects of immersion programs on students' test scores in reading, mathematics, and science and on English learners' (EL) reclassification. We estimate positive intent-to-treat (ITT) effects on reading performance in…

Using data from seven cohorts of language immersion lottery applicants in a large, urban school district, we estimate the causal effects of immersion programs on students' test scores in reading, mathematics, and science, and on English learners' (EL) reclassification. We estimate positive intent-to-treat (ITT) effects on reading performance in…

The present study revealed the dynamic process of speech development in a domestic immersion program by seven adult beginning learners of Japanese. The speech data were analyzed with fluency, accuracy, and complexity measurements at group, interindividual, and intraindividual levels. The results revealed the complex nature of language development…

Many educators and policy makers look to two-way dual language immersion as one of the most promising options to close achievement gaps for English learners. However, the programs' effectiveness depends on the quality of their implementation. This article reports on a large-scale study of the implementation of dual language immersion across a…

Many educators and policymakers look to two-way dual language immersion as one of the most promising options to close achievement gaps for English learners. However, the programs' effectiveness depends on the quality of their implementation. This article reports on a large-scale study of the implementation of dual language immersion across a…

Research has demonstrated that students in dual-language immersion programs perform as well as, or better than, their peers in core academic content areas by late elementary school. However, the extent to which immersion education fosters bilingualism has received less attention in the literature. Using data from a four-year efficacy study of…

Research has demonstrated that students in dual-language immersion programs perform as well as, or better than, their peers in core academic content areas by late elementary school. The extent to which immersion education fosters bilingualism, however, has received less attention in the literature. Using data from a four-year efficacy study of…

This study compares the frequency and distribution of different types of corrective feedback (CF) (recasts, prompts and explicit correction) and learner uptake in 43 hours of classroom interaction at the 4th-5th grade level across three instructional settings: (1) two content and language integrated learning (CLIL) classrooms in Spain with English…

This volume is a collection of selected refereed papers presented at the Association of Teachers of Japanese Annual Spring Conference held at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in March of 2011. It not only covers several important topics on teaching and learning spoken and written Japanese and culture in and beyond classroom settings, but also…