In the United States, new common state standards in English language arts and disciplinary literacy require K-12 students to "read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently." Issues of text complexity have spurred debates in the mainstream literacy, educational practice, and policy…

Native language prosodic structure is known to modulate the processing of non-native suprasegmental information. It has been shown that native speakers of French, a language without lexical stress, have difficulties storing non-native stress contrasts. We investigated whether the ability to store lexical tone (as in Mandarin Chinese) also depends…

Studying how children learn words in a foreign language can shed light on how language learning changes with development. In one experiment, we examined whether three-, four-, and five-year-olds could learn and remember words for familiar and unfamiliar objects in their native English and a foreign language. All age groups could learn and remember…

It is well established that learners transfer sounds from their first to their second language when speaking (see Major, 2008, and references therein). Recent work also indicates that learners may transfer their perception of sounds from the first to the second language. In some cases, errors in production and perception are explicitly corrected…

Although the number of emergent bilinguals (EBs), also known as English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. K-12 schools is growing at an increasing rate, K-12 mainstream teachers remain predominantly white and monolingual and receive little training for working with such learners. In addition, many states mandate "English-only" policies…

Project Partnerships Achieve Literacy (PAL) South Africa was designed to transform teachers' pedagogical practices in literacy instruction in an under-resourced school and, by doing so, improve the reading achievement of foundation phase students (Grades R-3). Sociocultural and situative theories of literacy and learning frame the study. To gauge…

This article describes the process of teaching English as a second language to members of an underprivileged local community. This initiative was developed as a result of a collaboration between a community center and a university. Three 1st-year TESOL master's candidates volunteered to design and teach curriculum to immigrant community members on…

Prior research suggesting that longer bilingual experience benefits inhibitory control and monitoring has been criticized for a lack of control over confounding variables. We addressed this issue by using a propensity-score matching procedure that enabled us to match early and late bilinguals on 18 confounding variables--for example, demographic…

The current study longitudinally examined the influence of aptitude on second language (L2) pronunciation development when 40 first-year Japanese university students engaged in practice activities inside and outside English-as-a-Foreign-Language classrooms over one academic year. Spontaneous speech samples were elicited at the beginning, middle,…

Due to the preK-12 student growth, the exponential growth of dual-language programs, and the gentrification of dual-language education, the need for critically conscious dual-language teachers is undeniably vital today. Institutions of higher education, in particular colleges of education, find themselves at the center of a transformative era, in…

In this collective case study, the preparation of Indiana's emergent bilingual district-level leaders demonstrates how they implement, negotiate, and lead language programs for their students. Most studies on leadership of emergent bilinguals focus on the building principal and not on this distinct district-level role. This district leadership…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to examine the role that the first language (L1), Spanish, at Pre-Kindergarten plays in predicting second language (L2), English, word reading in first grade. In addition, it examines the role of conceptual vocabulary in predicting word reading in English. Method: As part of a longitudinal study of…

Provision for students learning English as an additional language (EAL) frequently overlooks the linguistic resources these children bring to the classroom. This is despite international research that highlights the facilitative links between support of the home language and the acquisition of new languages. This article reports on a longitudinal…

This paper has studied the question formation techniques used by the Saudi students at Bisha University. It addresses the problems faced by the students in forming questions in English. The study has identified that a large number of the students suffer from the lack of proper grammar rules in forming various types of interrogative sentences and…

Acoustic and perceptual studies investgate B2-level Polish learners' acquisition of second language (L2) English word-boundaries involving word-initial vowels. In production, participants were less likely to produce glottalization of phrase-medial initial vowels in L2 English than in first language (L1) Polish. Perception studies employing word…