The ACTFL oral proficiency interview (OPI) and the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale provide both a testing method and a set of rating factors for evaluating proficiency. Both are closely related to actual language tasks identified as critical for government employees. Over time, the scale has been expanded to include four skills, a…

Achieving biliteracy is a remarkable accomplishment, and it is important to understand the range of factors that permit its successful realization. The authors investigated a factor known to affect reading in monolingual children that has received little attention in the second-language literature: morphological awareness. The researchers tracked…

In this study, 57 fifth-grade native Hebrew speakers performed orthographic-phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and oral word reading tasks in both Hebrew (first language [L1]) and English (second language [L2]). The results of the language-specific task scores in the two languages reflect, with certain qualifications, participants'…

The present study utilizes traditional silent reading and a think-aloud procedure to investigate the role of lexical cues to meaning in the incidental acquisition of the Spanish future tense. A total of 161 beginning-level university students of Spanish participated in the study. Two versions of a reading passage that contained 13 target items…

Although many studies have described the L2 learning opportunities created by individual tasks, considerably less research has investigated task-based syllabi and courses (Bruton, 2002; Candlin, 2001; Ellis, 2003; Skehan, 2003). This case study investigated teachers' and learners' reactions to a task-based EFL course at a Thai university. A team…

Three interactive tasks, increasing in the complexity of resource-directing reasoning demands on speaker/storyteller attribution of, and linguistic reference to, the thoughts and intentions of characters in narrative stimuli were performed by Japanese L1 speakers of English. Largely consistent with the claims of the Cognition Hypothesis, results…

Professors at the "Institucion Universitaria Colombo Americana" (UNICA) have aimed to deliver lessons for second language learners which integrate content and language, resulting in an "integrated lesson" design. The Center for Applied Linguistics (Washington, DC) recommends the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP)…

Although it is commonly believed that language and culture are inexorably linked, the precise nature of this relationship remains elusive. This study investigated the hypothesis that a loss in language signals a loss in culture if language is considered a central value. This hypothesis was investigated by rating the Hindi and English proficiency…

This study reports the results of a picture verification task assessing the interpretation of intra-sentential anaphora and cataphora in Italian by a group of English-Italian bilingual eight-year-olds, a group of age-matched Italian monolinguals, and a group of Italian monolingual adults. No significant differences between the groups were observed…

Listening in a second or foreign language is a very demanding task because it involves both correctly interpreting incoming speech and responding appropriately to the speaker. This qualitative classroom-based investigation describes the types and frequency of reception strategies used by learners at three different proficiency levels in French…

Reports on findings from an on-going study of the use of computer-mediated communication to support post-graduate, second language teacher education. Findings are reported according to organizing categories of social interaction, language use, and how different tasks influenced communicative exchanges. (Author/VWL)

Tested the predictions of three major hypotheses of relative clause acquisition in second language acquisition: the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH), the Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis (PDH) and the SO Hierarchy Hypothesis (SOHH). Analyses of data collected from 61 learners of English as a Second Language in three different elicitation…

Examines whether an individual's linguistic knowledge, either as a speaker of a particular language or as a bilingual, influences theory of mind development. Three- and four-year-old English monolinguals, Mandarin Chinese monolinguals, and Mandarin-English bilinguals were given appearance-reality, perspective-taking, and false-belief tasks.…

Different theories of second language acquisition offer conflicting views of the relationship between metalinguistic task performance and oral production. Examined this relationship with respect to the possessive determiners "his/her" in English. Learners' oral production was elicited using a picture description task and described according to…

This article examines the effects of test format and task type on candidate output in direct and semidirect versions of the oral interaction subtest of the Australian Assessment of Communicative English Skills. Results are discussed in relation to the degree of interactiveness and other factors that appear to influence lexical density and to the…