The national contributions contained in this paper formed the basis for the comparative study on the integration at school of immigrant children in Europe. Each contribution has exactly the same structure with four main sections entitled as follows: (1) National definitions and demographic context of immigration; (2) Measures offering school-based…

Achievement test scores for 417 fifth graders in both school settings indicated superior language achievement by the 164 immersion centre students. Questionnaire data from 94 teachers and administrators provided reasons for these differences. Implied that programs should focus on maximum use of French and meeting teachers' materials and resources…

This study looked at articulation between high school and college Japanese instruction. The two-year study compared the attrition and performance of students who had had high school instruction in Japanese with students who first began their study after entering Indiana University . (Author/JL)

Examines the morpho-syntax of task-based interaction and reports some possible grammatical consequences of interaction in split and shared information tasks undertaken by adult second language learners of English. Results indicate that communication tasks for language learning can be designed to influence the use of particular linguistic…

Evaluates the writing of Hispanic students in bilingual and submersion programs, comparing it with the writing of native English speakers in regular programs. Five dependent variables are evaluated: rhetorical effectiveness, overall quality of writing, productivity, syntactic maturity, and error frequency. (46 references) (Author/OD)

A review of the research on Canadian immersion programs supports two notions regarding second language learning: (1) older learners may have as much learning success as younger learners, and in a shorter time period; and (2) integration of content teaching and language teaching is paramount in effective second language instruction. (29 references)…

Describes a study that found, contrary to previous reports, that a strong, symmetrical release from proactive interference (PI) is the normal outcome for switches between American Sign Language (ASL) signs and English words and with switches between Manual and English alphabet characters. Subjects were college students enrolled in their first ASL…

Investigates the effectiveness of two types of computer feedback: one is traditional computer feedback that indicates only missing or unexpected words in the learner's response, and the other is intelligent computer feedback that provides further information about the nature of the errors in the form of metalinguistic rules. (17 references)…

Examines whether targeting instruction to students' weak points has an effect on their writing quality. Upper intermediate students in an English for academic purposes course were asked to write a composition before and after the instructional treatment. Comparison of results from the two tasks shows a significant increase in scores on both…

As our world becomes increasingly multicultural in nature, multilingual skills constitute an everyday phenomenon in schools. Since most of the second-language research has focused on school-age students, more research had to be conducted with language-minority students at the kindergarten level in order for psychologists and educators to develop…

Higher education in general and study abroad programming in particular are hardly strangers to stringent demands for accountability. What is new to higher education and to study abroad is the demand for accountability in terms of measurable student learning outcomes. This article is a first report from a system-wide initiative to document learning…

There are many untested, long-held assumptions within the field of study abroad concerning the impact of program elements such as study duration, language of instruction, program models, and student housing choices. One assumption embraced within the field is that direct enrollment (or full immersion) programs are more effective at achieving a…

Two hundred four (204) college students who had difficulties in both foreign language and math (FLD/MD), only math difficulties (MD), or only foreign language difficulties (FLD) were studied. Analysis of prevalence of presenting problems indicated that FLD and FLD/MD are relatively uncommon, compared to MD. Comparisons among the three groups…

This study compared the narratives of three groups of advanced speakers of Spanish with different learning backgrounds. The first group was made up of heritage speakers; the second group was composed of missionaries that had recently returned from a two-year sojourn in a Spanish-speaking country; and the third group comprised students who had…

The paper focuses on the development of teacher thinking, specifically L2 teachers' subject-matter cognitions, i.e. their Teacher Language Awareness (TLA) (see e.g. Andrews 2001, 2003). The study examines the evolving TLA, as it relates to grammar, of three teachers, each a graduate with more than 10 years' experience of teaching English in Hong…