Learning how to communicate and instruct non-English proficient students in a regular classroom is a challenging task, especially for novice teachers. New teachers need to overcome fear, insufficient pedagogical knowledge, and lack of teaching experience; therefore, getting started can be the most overwhelming part of the process. This article…

Theories concerning the development of phonological awareness place special emphasis on lexical and orthographic knowledge. Given the large degree of variability in preschool classrooms that house Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELL), this study controlled for classroom effects by removing classroom means and covariances based on 158…

This article provides portraits of two women on professional journeys to become bilingual teachers. Stacie Thao was born in Thailand. Nancy Aguilar was born in California, and spent some of her childhood in Mexico. Stacie's first language is Hmong, while Nancy's is Spanish. Each learned English in school, and each helped their immigrant parents…

Diversity among university students plays a significant role in raising awareness of numerous issues surrounding cultural heritage, language differences, cross-cultural collaboration, and international education. The integration of technological tools can assist students in cooperating nationally and internationally both in their current…

Due to the role language and literature play in the construction of social, economic and cultural systems, reading comprehension has become a growing challenge. This study examined how the relationship between English as a foreign language reading comprehension and life experiences while using the "Sight Word Strategy" could prove…

The purpose of this paper is to report on a usability study for ESL websites conducted to gain insights from learners of English as a second language (ESL) as they interacted with specific sites. Five carefully selected ESL sites were tested by 10 different users generating a total of fifty testing sessions. Two major research questions guided the…

This article describes an action research project in which the members of a basic English class for adults over 50 at a Colombian public university undertook the mission of discovering their potentialities as autonomous learners. By means of the reflective use of the language portfolio, the members of this course guided the planning and execution…

This article aims at identifying the kind of American and British literature tests that can be designed to allow students who enter a bilingual education program at a private university in Colombia to have their previous knowledge in these two subjects accredited through a proficiency test. Students' needs, opinions, beliefs, existing commercial…

This study explored whether hypermedia annotation presentation in different locations of the text facilitates EFL vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. It also examined participants' preferences for the location of hypermedia-annotated text (at the end of the text, in the margin, at the bottom of the screen, or in a pop-up window).…

This study explores whether different types of hypermedia annotations facilitate reading comprehension for intermediate and advanced ESL learners. Data was collected from 84 intermediate and advanced level adult ESL learners using a tracking tool that recorded the amount of time readers spent on a given annotation. An expository text was annotated…

Considering the difficulties in understanding the global meaning of texts, this paper intends to give some suggestions on how to help students reach a deeper understanding of texts in intensive reading classroom within the framework of schema theory. The purpose of this paper is expressed in three ways. The first is to give a brief overview of…

Effective teaching, among other things, can be seen as a series of orchestrated moves between different kinds and levels of knowledge, be they between personal, everyday and technical knowledge, between school knowledge and the world beyond, and between knowledge in different disciplines. This article is about bridging the gap between what…

In this case study, the work of an exemplary high school social studies teacher is highlighted. In her class, late-arrival immigrant students participated in oral, writing, and demonstration activities as they learned the physical, cultural, and historical traditions of geography education. As newcomers to the English language, the students'…

This paper is a qualitative case study of a Korean first grade child. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of a first grade Korean child's oral language interactions with teachers, parents, peers, and community members and to examine how a child's oral language impacts his literacy learning in English. The data were…

Previous studies show that young monolingual children's ability to "fast map" new word forms is closely associated with both their age and existing vocabulary knowledge. In this study we investigate potential relationships between age, fast mapping skills and existing vocabulary knowledge in both languages of developing bilingual preschool…