This article reports on an investigation into the bilingual development of literacy skills in Portuguese heritage language speakers in Switzerland in which we sought to put Cummins' linguistic interdependence hypothesis to the test. Three predictions were derived from this hypothesis: (1) Literacy skill levels in one of the bilinguals' languages…

The Highly Immersive Programme (HIP) was introduced into the Malaysian education scenario with the aims of involving and immersing students in an English environment. Through HIP, it is hoped that students will have better opportunity and platform to use the language confidently, thus improving their English proficiency. HIP is aimed to foster…

We report on a research project that develops and measures the efficacy of multilingual teaching approaches in the early English foreign language (FL) classroom in Germany. Although there is an abundance of programmatic calls for integrating minority and other languages the students speak in FL teaching, there are few materials and methods for…

This article briefly reviews the social, political, and economic context that explains the present status of elementary language education in the United States and addresses the challenges identified by recent reports on the state of language education in the United States. Different curricular models of world language education--exploratory,…

This paper examines the literacy results of English language learners (ELLs) in two California schools following either the 50/50 or the 90/10 dual language (DL) program model. The purpose of this paper is to provide a literature review of dual language programs with an analysis of two schools' websites and literacy assessment data in order to…

This article reports on an action-research study which examined the impact of a radio program as a strategy to develop the speaking skills of a mixed course at a private institution in Colombia. Hence, data were collected from 18 students through tests, surveys, field notes, and interviews. The results indicate that there is an important…

This article reports on a number of projects on early English teaching in the Netherlands. The focus of these projects has been on the impact of English on the development of the mother tongue and the development of skills in the foreign language. Overall the results show that there is no negative effect on the mother tongue and that the gains in…

The purpose of this study was to understand the learning trajectories of the growing numbers of English learner students in Arizona, especially those who struggle to pass state English language arts and math content tests. This study followed three cohorts of English learner students in Arizona (kindergarten, grade 3, and grade 6) over six school…

This study presents first-year findings of a 25-week longitudinal project derived from a two-year longitudinal randomized trial study at the elementary school level in Costa Rica on effective computer-assisted language learning (CALL) approaches in an English as a foreign language (EFL) setting. A pre-test-post-test experimental group design was…

This research was undertaken with a view to assess the deficiencies in English language among Primary School Children and to develop Multimedia Scenario Based Learning Programme (MSBLP) for mastery of English language which required special attention and effective treatment. The experimental study with pre-test, post-test control group design was…

The Cultural Heritage Bilingual Program (CHBP) was developed for English Language Learner (ELL) students from language groups not served by current bilingual programs in the Houston Independent School District (HISD). The two main bilingual programs in the district (Transitional Bilingual and Dual Language Bilingual) are designed to serve ELLs…

Latino students' educational success is central to America's prosperity--in traditional immigrant destinations and in New Latino Diaspora locations, previously unfamiliar with Latinos. Implicated in this success is the reception young immigrants receive, especially the ways in which they are identified in schools. We describe findings from 6 years…

Educators have generally believed that foreign language instruction should begin in kindergarten or earlier to promote optimum oral language development (e.g., Abbott, 1998; Curtain & Dahlberg, 2010; Rhodes & Pufahl, 2010; Rosenbusch, 1991; Swender & Duncan, 1998). This article describes two Spanish programs in the Westport…

The Cultural Heritage Bilingual Program (CHBP) was developed for English Language Learner (ELL) students from language groups not served by current bilingual programs in the Houston Independent School District (HISD), which are designed for Spanish-speaking ELLs. Currently, CHBP is only implemented for native Vietnamese speakers at one campus,…

Seventeen years ago the author had left teaching secondary school Spanish at Dwight-Englewood School in Englewood, New Jersey, to create a FLES program at that same school. It's been a labor of love and a work in progress ever since. Along the way she has become convinced of a few things: an early start, long sequence, proficiency target and…