This longitudinal case study investigated the developmental trajectories of two participants enrolled in an ITA oral communication course at Purdue University. The course provides language support to the ITA population who play a crucial role in higher education programs in the U.S. (Gorsuch, 2016). Over four months (i.e., one semester), I…

The present paper compares the vocabulary development of a group of CLIL and of traditional EFL learners along three years. The observation that a CLIL approach might provide with larger benefits in the long-run vocabulary is the starting point of this study. We had learners in the two groups complete a letter-writing task. These writings were…

Han's (2009, 2013) selective fossilization hypothesis (SFH) claims that L1 markedness and L2 input robustness determine the fossilizability (and learnability) of an L2 feature. To test the validity of the model, a pseudo-longitudinal study was designed in which the errors in the argumentative essays of 52 Iranian EFL learners were identified and…

Within the Australian education system, Aboriginal students' use of non-standard English features is often viewed simplistically as evidence of non-attainment of literacy and oral-English milestones. One reason for this is the widespread use of assessment tools which fail to differentiate between native-English speakers and students who are…

Compares 1973 and 1978 studies of the English syntactic proficiency of bilingual Mexican-American fourth- and ninth-grade Spanish/English speakers in Las Vegas (New Mexico). Shows that students enrolled in bilingual education throughout the elementary school years perform better on syntactic maturity measures than do their counterparts not…