Linking language assessments is a matter of greater concern with the advent of educational frameworks used to orient curricula and profile attainment. Outlines practical ways the principles of techniques recognized for linking separate assessments--equating, calibrating, statistical moderation, predicting (or benchmarking), and social moderation…

Investigates word frequency as an indicator of language proficiency in the written English of Grade 13 learners of English in Hong Kong. The study develops Laufer and Nation's (1995) work on Lexical Frequency Profile in which student writing was analyzed for the frequency of word families, with vocabulary profiles produced from the scripts on the…

Examines the relationship between phonetic possibility and phonological permissibility of segment types. Specific focus is on whether there are any phonetically impossible segments phonologically permissible, and whether there are any phonetically possible segments phonologically impermissable. Examines the case of nasality spreading in Sudanese…

A grammaticality judgment test based on five structures of English grammar was administered in oral and written form. Two groups were formed by separating participants who began learning English at younger and older than 15 years of age. Performance patterns were different for the two groups, the linguistic structure tested affected participants'…

Explores the contribution of cognitive-academic language proficiency to second language acquisition in instructional contexts, using Cummins' concepts of bilingual education. Discusses Albania's educational practices and reviews a joint project by Austrian and Albanian universities that shows how cognitive academic proficiency, along with…

Research-based professional development is essential for districts and teachers across the nation that face the challenge of providing a quality education for increasingly diverse student populations. In this study, the researchers surveyed 729 teachers in one midwestern suburban district recently impacted by high numbers of immigrant and refugee…

NCLB is leaving English language learners behind because it defies logic and common sense, is internally self-contradictory, and sets AYP expectations that the subgroup cannot possibly attain. Although the U.S. Department of Education allows states to use a variety of strategies to avoid having a Limited English Proficiency (LEP) subgroup, few…

Hadi-Tabassum believes having a separate life context for each language she learned in childhood enabled her to switch easily among five different tongues. She states that the success of dual immersion bilingual programs is largely dependent on whether they immerse students in each of the involved languages separately and help students have a…

Many researchers have found that learners go through stages in acquiring the L2 tense system: from relying on pragmatic devices to using more lexical devices, and then to using more grammatical morphology. Chinese is a language that has no tense (a [-tense] language) and relies on pragmatic and lexical devices to indicate temporal locations. The…

Research findings from several academic domains have demonstrated that students' judgments of their own academic capabilities, or self-efficacy beliefs, influence their academic behaviors and performances. Absent from this body of research are studies assessing self-efficacy beliefs and their relation to foreign language proficiency. Informed by…

This study focuses on how valid information about learner perception of strategy use during communicative tasks can be gathered systematically from English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. First, the study attempted to develop a questionnaire for statistical analysis, named the Oral Communication Strategy Inventory (OCSI). The research…

Two studies explore the relationship between foreign language teachers' perceptions of their students' academic skills and affective characteristics and their native language skills, foreign language aptitude, and oral and written foreign language proficiency. In Study I (replication), students who scored significantly lower on native language and…

This article examines a graduate teacher-training course designed to meet both the Spanish language proficiency needs of mainstream, bilingual, and English as a second language teachers, and their common professional development needs to teach English language learners. For most course participants Spanish is their second language and the course…

This article examines the primary assumption underlying the recent passage of propositions aimed at meeting the need of English language learners (ELLs). The assumption is that English language learners normally need only one year of intensive structured English immersion to learn English well enough to be academically successful in an all-English…

This paper examines the relationships among motivation, metacognition, and proficiency in listening comprehension. Adolescent learners of French (N = 57) completed two questionnaires. A motivation questionnaire tapped student responses to three orientations related to motivation: amotivation, intrinsic, and extrinsic. A metacognitive awareness…