Provides observations from a study of an attempt to introduce Indonesian in an Australian high school. Data collection was done through interviews and classroom observations. Classroom test results were used to compare achievement in subject content and language learning. Findings are discussed. (Author/VWL)

Compares the use of a print and multimedia program to teach Spanish to second through fifth graders from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Showed that achievement and proficiency of students using print or multimedia materials did not differ at posttest. A small but statistically significant difference in achievement emerged at the…

Reports on an attempt to compare two data-collecting instruments, Think-aloud Protocols and strategies questionnaires, applied to capture reading/writing strategies. Subjects were immigrant speakers of linguistically different heritage languages, Russian and Amharic first languages, and thus represented two ethnic groups, who went through the…

Provides longitudinal insights into a pattern of drop-out that had previously been identified by tracking educational outcomes among English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) youth in a single, urban school. A comparison of two cohorts suggests that accelerated integration into academic mainstream courses has had a detrimental impact on the educational…

This article is drawn from a large-scale ongoing study on linguistic progress in advanced French as a second language (FL2). The performance of 48 English-speaking students who spent their third year of university in France the "experimental" group) has been compared to that of 39 classmates who chose to stay and study at home in…

The relationship between group and individual has been explored within the variationist paradigm. In L1, group patterns of variation are replicated by the individual. Second language acquisition research is concerned with the individual learner, but second language acquisition variationist researchers tend to group learners. Little empirical…

The written English vocabulary of 72 deaf elementary school students of various proficiency levels in American Sign Language (ASL) was compared with the performance of 60 hearing English-as-a-second-language (ESL) speakers and 61 hearing monolingual speakers of English, all of similar age. Students were asked to retell "The Tortoise and the Hare"…

This study examines whether aural processing of input in a situation of implicit instruction can build a knowledge base that is available for both comprehension and production tasks. Fifty-five Dutch students learned a miniature linguistic system based on Spanish. Three training conditions were compared in which noun-adjective gender agreement was…

In foreign language education, new professional demands are made on teachers. Foreign language teaching can no longer be regarded as a mainly linguistic task. Teachers are now required to teach intercultural communicative competence. Internationally, the assumption seems to be that teachers are already moving in the advocated direction and are…

This study investigated growth in reading, vocabulary, and memory in children (ages 5 to 10) learning English as a second language identified at risk for reading disabilities (RD). A growth curve analysis showed that RD children were significantly below children not at risk in English and Spanish reading, Spanish short-term memory (STM), Spanish…

It has frequently been claimed that, in foreign language writing, attention to linguistic processes inhibits attention available for higher level conceptual processing [e.g., Chenoweth & Hayes, 2001; Whalen & Menard, 1995]. This study examines this hypothesis for foreign language revision processes by comparing online revisions made by 22…

Any description of what it means to know a word in a foreign language is likely to include recognition of form, both how a word sounds when heard and what it looks like when written. However, tests of vocabulary knowledge focus almost exclusively on the written form of the word. We have little idea of learners' phonological vocabulary knowledge or…

The study compares the effectiveness of Focus on Form (FonF) and Focus on FormS (FonFs) approaches in learning new L2 words by 158 high-school learners of English as L2. In phase 1 of the study, the FonF group read a text containing the target words, discussed it in small groups, and answered comprehension questions. The FonFs group studied the…

Most successes in intelligent tutoring systems have come in well-defined domains like algebra or physics. We investigate how to support students in acquiring ill-defined skills of intercultural competence using an online environment that employs clips of feature films from a target culture. To test the effectiveness of a set of attention-focusing…

Research on the development of efficiency in spoken language understanding has focused largely on middle-class children learning English. Here we extend this research to Spanish-learning children (n=49; M=2;0; range=1;3-3;1) living in the USA in Latino families from primarily low socioeconomic backgrounds. Children looked at pictures of familiar…