This article seeks to situate Spanish as a global language by exploring both the top-down institutional processes that promote it and the bottom-up grassroots actions that are also increasingly important in the spread and maintenance of global Spanish. This article argues that one of the most important influences now in the explosion of Spanish…

English learners of French whose first language (L1) does not mark the perfective/imperfective distinction have shown verb semantic influence and an overall preference for perfective over imperfective in their use of second language (L2) tense-aspect markers. This study investigated whether learners whose L1 marks the perfective/imperfective…

This qualitative study inquired into secondary students' perceptions of their participation in a secondary Spanish-English two-way immersion (TWI) program, triangulating data from 166 surveys and 24 focus interviews across grades 6-12. After reviewing current research on secondary two-way immersion programs, the article describes the study and its…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between foreign language learning and verbal ability in English as measured by the verbal section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) Reasoning Test. Comparing foreign language students to nonforeign language students in this study, the effect of taking a foreign language on SAT verbal…

This article addresses the situation of lower-proficiency heritage language learners of Spanish in terms of their linguistic similarities to second language learners. The analysis highlights grammatical and lexical features in the oral discourse of Spanish heritage and second language learners at intermediate and advanced levels of study,…

We examined the performance of sequential bilingual children with and without Specific Language Impairment (SLI), who had Spanish as an L1 and English as their L2, on an auditory non-word repetition task using Spanish phonotactic patterns. We also analyzed the accuracy with which this task distinguished these children (according to children's and…

Objective: Characterize frequency and type of health and nutrient content claims in prime-time weeknight Spanish- and English-language television advertisements from programs shown in 2003 with a high viewership by women aged 18 to 35 years. Design: Comparative content analysis design was used to analyze 95 hours of Spanish-language and 72 hours…

Counselors and early interventionists increasingly serve Spanish-speaking families. Yet, often, cultural accommodations merely imply use of interpreters or bilingual providers. Cultural competence requires self-awareness and understanding the client's community and specific risk and resiliency factors. Implications for serving clients of Latino…

This study investigates whether L2 instruction on the Spanish aspectual system containing a recognition task of the learners' L1 (Dutch) aspectual system helps the learner to understand and interiorise the L2 system. Second year Dutch university students (N = 20) took part in the experiment. In weekly groups of two to four, the students received…

Long known as a college-football powerhouse, the University of Alabama (UA) is now considered a model for institutions seeking to maintain or boost their academic quality even as enrollments increase and budgets are squeezed. According to Carol Twigg, president of the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT), which has been a significant…

Notes that children often need enticement into the world of books and reading and that the arts can be utilized to encourage excitement through aesthetic experiences and appreciation of world culture. Provides an annotated bibliography of age-appropriate books and series for Spanish-speaking children. (Author/SD)

Oral proficiency is an important goal in second language learning not only for communication, but also for developing reading and writing skills. Use of cooperative learning (CL) strategies has been shown to successfully improve second language learning in many cases for its focus on individual accountability and positive interdependence (Kagan &…

The aim of this work is to analyse how Spanish readers react to English discourse markers in a text. We carry out an empirical study in which we ask three research question: (a) if there is any relationship between presence of discourse markers or absence of discourse markers and reading comprehension in English as a foreign language, (b) if there…

The main purpose of this study is to develop a Spanish language screening measure that (a) is valid and reliable for the purpose of identifying Spanish-speaking (SS) children at risk for Language Impairment (LI), (b) is valid and reliable across different Spanish dialects, different socioeconomic groups, and different ethnicities, (c) uses a…

The purpose of this research was to ascertain if the reading comprehension skills of English-speaking fifth grade students improve when they study a second language. The research was done in an inner-city elementary school in Rochester, New York. The researcher provided a weekly after-school workshop in foreign languages for a group of children…