This dissertation focused on comparing the academic achievement and language proficiency in both English and Spanish of students at risk for language and learning difficulties, with bilingual typically developing students in two bilingual educational contexts: English as a Second Language program and Spanish two-way immersion program. Data was…

In second language acquisition, it is well known that an early age of onset and an extensive amount of naturalistic input are key elements promoting successful learning outcomes. What is less well known is what outcomes we can expect when the main source of these elements is full-immersion schooling, defined for the purposes of this study as a…

Both for the first language (L1) and for all additional languages (L2 or L3), grammatical knowledge plays a vital role in understanding texts (e.g., Grabe, 2005). However, little is known about the development and interaction of grammar and reading comprehension in beginning foreign language learning, especially with respect to children with a…

Language immersion students' lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic competencies are well documented, yet their phonological skill has remained relatively unexplored. This study investigates the Spanish vowel productions of a cross-sectional sample of 35 one-way Spanish immersion students. Learner productions were analyzed acoustically and compared to…

One in five school-age children in the U.S. speaks a language other than English at home (Zeigler & Camarota, 2014). Roughly half of these emerging bilingual students (Garcia, 2009) are classified as English learners (ELs) when they enter school, meaning they do not meet state or district criteria for English proficiency (NCES, 2015). As the…

The current pilot study compares the overall academic achievement in the area of language arts literacy among elementary bilingual students enrolled in either a Dual Language: Two-Way Immersion program or in an Early Exit, Transitional Bilingual program in a large urban public school district. By analyzing the results of curriculum based measures…

Instruction in English as a foreign language at an early age is becoming more common worldwide even though the effects of this early instruction are not yet known. This study investigated the English and Chinese language performance of students enrolled in early English immersion in a Chinese primary school. In addition, factors that could predict…

A study of the error patterns and corrections in the casual peer conversation of anglophones educated in a French immersion program shows the same peer correction patterns used by native speakers, undermining the assumed importance of peer talk in second language classes. (MSE)

Three studies are presented, each of which is a comparison of the acquisition of an aspect of the French verb system by three groups of speakers. The speakers are: young Anglophones learning French as a second language in an early French immersion program in Montreal; young monolingual Francophones attending elementary French language schools in…

The academic achievement in French of two cohorts of grade 9 students of a public school early immersion program in New Brunswick, which has total French-language instruction through grade 4 and includes all students in the program except transfers was compared to that of a group of native French-speaking students at a nearby French-language…

The authors conducted an experiment during the 2003-2004 school year to determine whether "On Our Way to English" ("OWE"), a product to help elementary students learn to read and speak English, was more effective in a California and a Texas school district than materials already in place. In the California study, 384 English…

The authors were asked to find out whether "On Our Way to English" ("OWE"), a supplementary, text-based product to help elementary school students learn to read and speak English was more effective in a California and a Texas school district than the materials the districts already had in place. They conducted an experiment…