This exploratory mixed-methods study examined the influence of an on-campus canine therapy program on linguistically diverse international students' perceptions of their English language development and stress. Participants were recruited from English language support classes at a mid-size western Canadian university and were randomly selected…

Acquiring second language and intercultural skills tied to real-world contexts is key to personal and professional success for students in today's globally connected society. This paper defines and details the benefits of integrating a current Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) approach, which connects language learning and intercultural skills…

The author is a Spanish national who has worked as a teacher and lecturer in the United Kingdom throughout her career. Over the last 18 years in Higher Education (HE), she has seen many students graduating either with a degree in languages or with some language courses within their HE studies, and the author knows that the skills acquired during…

In light of the impact of professional and personal skills of teachers on their students, the purpose of this paper was to delimit the efficiency of corpus on pre-service teachers' self-directed learning and oral proficiency. It was anticipated that pre-service teachers receiving training on corpus would reveal greater gains in self-directed…

Shy children are less likely to interact with peers and teachers, ask questions, and participate in classroom activities. Children low in attention and inhibitory control also perform worse academically. Although research indicates children's relationships with teachers may be protective for children at risk for academic difficulties, less is…

The overall purpose of this study was to examine caregivers' adherence to a storybook-reading intervention using latent class analysis (LCA). This study also examined whether adherence was related to child and family characteristics including children's language ability, caregiver education, and whether the child has a disability. Caregivers of…

Language ability plays a major role in children's future development. In the present study, the effect of three interactive reading approaches on children's language ability was investigated through a pre-posttest design. Participants were N = 73 children (aged 4-6) from three early childhood education classrooms. Classrooms were assigned to one…

One of the reasons for failure of education system to form developed FL skills in its graduates consists in the lack of L2 immersion and low motivation of learners. Integration of Content and Language (CLIL) in teaching content subjects is believed to be an efficient way of improving the situation. However, introducing CLIL techniques and…

Critical language awareness (CLA) is increasingly identified as a central component of the Spanish heritage language (SHL) classroom (Leeman, 2005; Martínez, 2003; among others). As a minority language, SHL is subject to sociopolitical, cultural, and economic forces that devalue its status. It is devalued in the eyes of the public, as a legitimate…

This paper presents the first phase of a study conducted to analyze Knowledge Building forums for evidence of second language acquisition. This study is an analysis of the posts within an existing forum in search of evidence of foreign language learning. The analysis found that the collaborative writing project shows evidence that the students…

The article discusses the features of methods of teaching the history of language in a foreign language classroom. With regard to the increase of the number of applicants who enroll in Russian universities directly on the basis of secondary education, bypassing the preparatory faculties, which arises the problem of an insufficiently prepared group…

This study reports on the conceptualization of a new construct targeting the cross-disciplinary academic language skills most relevant to school reading comprehension, targeting the validation of the Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) Instrument, a novel assessment tool which measures this construct. Participants included Grade 4-8 monolingual…

The purpose of this research was to identify the role of the level of proficiency in the English language with high-performing third-year students in the Mayan area of Yucatán, near a tourist region called the Riviera Maya. The aim was also to explore the relationship between learning a second language and the subsequent overall improvement in the…

This study set out to compare patterns of relationships among phonological skills, orthographic skills, semantic knowledge, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension in English as a first language (EL1) and English language learners (ELL) students and to test the applicability of the lexical quality hypothesis framework. Participants…

This article presents the major findings of a longitudinal study on the use of photograph-based assignments to improve higher-order thinking and language skills among second- and fifth-grade students using an intervention framework and a convergent mixed method (quantitative and qualitative) approach. The method promoted oriented study skills for…