The present article reports on a study that set out to investigate the effectiveness of strategies and decisions formulated in foreign language planning to ensure learners' language achievement in a higher education context which trains learners to become English or French teachers or translators. By drawing on data collected from simulated…

The development of intercultural competence and foreign language skills in study abroad and the foreign language (FL) classroom is often seen as an either/or proposition due to lack of time, training or the availability of materials in the target language. The Critical Incident method (CI) provides an example of an intercultural training tool that…

Overrepresentation of Dual Language Learners (DLLs) in special education remains a problem even after 40 years of inquiry. One factor is that the U.S. federal government has neither clearly explained the definition of Specific Learning Disability (SLD) nor operationally defined it to identify children for special education services. This lack of…

This article reports on a case study that investigates the learning preferences and strategies of Chinese students learning English as a second language (ESL) in Canadian school settings. It focuses on the interaction between second language (L2) learning methods that the students have adopted from their previous learning experience in China and…

The present study used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 to examine whether the relationship between first-grade word-reading and reading-comprehension growth through eighth grade was different for language-minority learners (LMs) versus native English-speaking students (NEs). Among high word…

This study reports on an investigation of the predictive validity of the TOEFL iBT®test in an English-medium institution (EMI) in a non-target-language context, namely, Turkey. The relationship between TOEFL iBT scores and academic performance was explored in a cohort of 286 undergraduate students, as was the TOEFL iBT's relationship with an…

Undergraduate engineering units (subjects) are delivered by Australian academics at two universities in China over a three-week period. Students may choose to transfer to the Australian university to complete the final two years of the Bachelor of Engineering with Honours degree (2+2 program). The aim of this study is to determine what strategies…

This article presents evidence for a validity argument on the ACTFL Assessment of Performance Toward Proficiency in Languages (AAPPL) tests (Interpersonal Listening/Speaking, Presentational Writing, Interpretive Listening, and Interpretive Reading) by summarizing an analysis of the 2014 test data from examinations administered in three languages…

This study critically explored Filipino third graders' fluency in science to determine their readiness to comprehend and understand fourth level science, which is taught in English. This mixed design case research purposively sampled 30 third graders from a government-owned elementary school. An oral reading technique using a pre-selected science…

Recent analyses of wide-scale writing assessment outcomes indicate that English writing achievement for fourth- and fifth-grade emerging bilingual learners continues to be an area of great concern. Utilizing the theory of holistic bilingualism and a mixed methods design, this study examines the writing skills of 44 emerging bilingual fourth and…

This study reports on how students construct new language knowledge by indirect feedback in web-based collaborative writing. Indirect feedback (text organization, reader-based perspectives, and clarity of purpose) encourages students to negotiate meaning instead of merely copying peers' direct feedback on grammatical corrections. According to the…

Aware of the challenges set before the Houston Independent school District by rapid growth in the numbers of English learner students, and a critical shortage of teachers with bilingual certification for more than a decade, members of Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest's English Learners Research Alliance sought information that districts…

In recent years, education data have become both more easily accessible and more important than ever to decisions about K-12 policies and practice. Under the "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA), states are required to publish data on how students, including English Learners (ELs), are performing in areas such as reading, math, and…

Constructionist research on L2 learning has focused on the degrees to which skewed frequency (Goldberg, Casenhiser & White, 2007; Casenhiser & Goldberg, 2005; Goldberg, Casenhiser, & Sethuraman 2004) in a person's linguistic environment can facilitate "entrenchment," "schematization," and "contingency…

The English Language Learner student population is on the rise in the United States. There are more students than ever entering school with a language other than English as their primary language. There is an inconsistency in the delivery service (pull-out or push-in) as well as a variety of pedagogical practices used to instruct students in…