This article reports on an extensive survey administered to advanced heritage language (HL) learners to examine their language behaviors, attitudes, and backgrounds. To date, there have been no detailed categorizations of advanced HL learners to guide classroom instruction and curriculum design. Thus the present study is a first attempt to fill…

Mobile phones as new addition to information and communication technologies have created new ways to help learners in the process of foreign language learning. Given the importance of academic vocabularies for university students, this study tried to investigate the effectiveness of SMS on Iranian university students' vocabulary learning and…

This study examined the use of automatic speech recognition (ASR) scored elicited oral response (EOR) tests to assess the speaking ability of English language learners. It also examined the relationship between ASR-scored EOR and other language proficiency measures and the ability of the ASR to rate speakers without bias to gender or native…

Background: Deaf children vary in the use of and proficiency in signed language. The majority of studies on writing skills of children who are deaf did not assess deaf children's proficiency in signed language and/or grouped together deaf children with varying sign language skills. Aims: Adopting a bimodal bilingual perspective, we examined…

This article presents the methodology adopted for transcribing and quantifying temporal fluency phenomena in a spoken L2 corpus (L2 English, French, and Italian by learners of different proficiency levels). The CHILDES suite is being used for transcription and analysis, and we have adapted the CHAT format in order to code disfluencies as precisely…

This study compared the use of English past tense in a group of Spanish-English bilingual children with language impairment (BLI) to younger groups of bilinguals with typical and atypical language development reported in an earlier study. Ten children with BLI enrolled in 3rd-6th grade participated. Children supplied 12 regular, 12 irregular, and…

Multiple uses of the same assessment may present challenges for both the design and use of an assessment. Little advice, however, has been given to assessment developers as to how to understand the phenomena of multiple assessment use and meet the challenges these present. Particularly problematic is the case in which an assessment is used for…

Most linguistic processes--acquisition, change, deterioration--take place in and are determined by a complex and multifactorial web of language internal and language external influences. This implies that the impact of each individual factor can only be determined on the basis of a careful consideration of its interplay with all other factors. The…

Background/Context: English language learner (ELL) students are lagging behind because of the extra challenges they face relative to their peers in acquiring academic English language proficiency, and the added burden of learning content in a language in which they are not proficient. The mandated inclusion of ELL students in the nation's…

Background/Context: How do we account for the persistence of below-average math test score performance among California Hispanics who are fluent in English, as well as Spanish-dominant English learners? Recent studies have attributed the problem to an overly rigid focus on "what works" in curriculum and fluency in English to the…

Most current idiom processing models acknowledge, after Gernsbacher and Robertson (1999) that deriving an idiomatic meaning entails suppression of contextually inappropriate, literal meanings of idiom constituent words. While embedding idioms in the rich disambiguating context can promote earlier suppression of incompatible literal meanings,…

In recent decades, with an increasing application of computer technology to the delivery of oral language proficiency assessment, there have been renewed debates over the appropriateness of two different testing modes, namely, (a) face-to-face, or direct, testing, and (b) person-to-machine, or semi-direct, testing. Previous research conducted in…

This study investigates the variation in oral proficiency demonstrated by 14 Air Traffic Controllers across two types of testing tasks: work-related radio telephony-based tasks and non-specific English tasks on aviation topics. Their performance was compared statistically in terms of level ratings on the International Civil Aviation Organization…

This study describes limited English proficient (LEP) student enrollment and achievement trends in Maryland. Two research questions guide this study: (1) How did the enrollment of LEP students in Maryland public schools change between 2002/03 and 2008/09?; and (2) How did performance (the percentage scoring at the proficient or advanced level) on…

This study describes English language learner (ELL) student enrollment and achievement trends in Pennsylvania public schools between 2002/03 and 2008/09. Two research questions guide this study: (1) How did the enrollment of ELL students in Pennsylvania public schools change between 2002/03 and 2008/09?; and (2) How did performance (the percentage…