"Teacher talk", which remains a primary feature of much education, plays a crucial role in EFL contexts where exposure to the L2 is often confined to the language classroom, and where local teachers generally share L1 with their students. The present study explores fresh ways of describing the major pedagogic functions of teacher talk…

Authors examined the relationship between individual differences in L1 print exposure and differences in early L1 skills and later L2 aptitude, L2 proficiency, and L2 classroom achievement. Participants were administered measures of L1 word decoding, spelling, phonemic awareness, reading comprehension, receptive vocabulary, and listening…

The 2015-16 survey "Programs and Services for High School English Learners" provides the first nationally representative data on this topic. This report is based on that survey and presents data on programs and services for high school English learners (ELs), including instructional approaches, newcomer programs, online or computer-based…

The Cultural Heritage Bilingual Program (CHBP) was developed for English Language Learner (ELL) students from language groups not served by current bilingual programs in the Houston Independent School District (HISD), which are designed for Spanish-speaking ELLs. Currently, CHBP is only implemented for native Vietnamese speakers at one campus,…

This paper reports on a study that investigates the impact of learning context on the L2 acquisition of English by German-speaking pupils. Learning context is operationalized in terms of the relative "prominence" of the L1 and the L2 within the learning context, which in turn reflects the "functional roles" and "domains of use" allocated to the L2…

The objective was to examine the impact of different types of accommodations on performance in content tests such as mathematics. The meta-analysis included 14 U.S. studies that randomly assigned school-aged English language learners (ELLs) to test accommodation versus control conditions or used repeated measures in counter-balanced order.…

In response to new theoretical claims and inconclusive empirical findings regarding relative clauses in East Asian languages, this study examined the factors relevant to relative clause production by Korean heritage speakers. Gap position (subject vs. object), animacy (plus or minus animate), and the topicality of head nouns (plus or minus…

The development of critical thinking (CT) skills has become a key goal for educators in first and second language contexts. There is evidence that the use of such activities has still not become widespread in a number of ELT situations. One reason for this may be lack of awareness about how levels of thinking can be conceptualized in ELT…

This paper reports on the oral reading of five grade 2 to 6 isiXhosa (L1) speakers reading isiXhosa (L1) and English (L2) texts. It examines the readers' oral reading miscues (or errors) to understand the extent to which these miscues constitute a language or a literacy problem in this group of readers. Conclusions are that (a) these readers read…

Learning new vocabulary words in a second language is a challenge for the adult learner, especially when the second language writing system differs from the first language writing system. According to the lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti & Hart, 2001), there are three constituents to word-level knowledge: orthographic, phonological, and…

This article reports on a study using qualitative methods to investigate intracultural bullying, specifically, bullying between Mexican American (MA) and Mexican immigrant (MI) high school students. Previous research has reported specific cultural conflicts and discrimination within ethnic groups due to differences in acculturation. The purpose of…

The present study aimed to identify the role of both student- and school-level characteristics in primary school students' achievement in the science curriculum. As societies become more culturally and linguistically diverse, many students enter the classroom with a home language that is different from the language of instruction used at school.…

This paper investigates the perceptions of teachers from one Sabaot dominated primary school in western Kenya regarding the medium of instruction (MoI) policy in different class levels. While their "ideal" MoI policy bears some resemblance to the official policy which advocates mother tongue (MT) as medium in lower primary and English in…

This fact sheet provides demographic information for the young Dual Language Learner (DLL) population in New York State, based on Migration Policy Institute (MPI) analysis of U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) data pooled over the 2011-15 period. DLLs, defined as children ages 8 and under with at least one parent who speaks a…

This fact sheet provides demographic information for the young Dual Language Learner (DLL) population in South Carolina, based on Migration Policy Institute (MPI) analysis of U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) data pooled over the 2011-15 period. DLLs, defined as children ages 8 and under with at least one parent who speaks a…