Sultanate of Oman is one out of many developing countries around the world which have valued English as a very important international language and a tool for achieving multiple purposes. When His Majesty the Sultan came to power in 1970, the government accepted English as the only official foreign language and allocated huge budgets and resources…

This paper reports the findings of a study aiming to reveal the recurring patterns of lexical, syntactic and textual errors in student translations of a specialized EU genre from English into Hungarian. By comparing the student translations to the official translation of the text, this article uncovers the most frequent errors that students made…

It is predicted that Hispanic school-aged children will outnumber non-Hispanic white students in public schools by 2050 (Wolf, Herman, & Dietel, 2010). While the number of Latino English language learners (ELLs) continues to grow, their educational achievement remains problematic. Data reveal that ELL dropout, mobility, and poverty rates are…

The 2015-16 survey "Programs and Services for High School English Learners" provides the first nationally representative data on this topic. This report is based on that survey and presents data on programs and services for high school English learners (ELs), including instructional approaches, newcomer programs, online or computer-based…

The Cultural Heritage Bilingual Program (CHBP) was developed for English Language Learner (ELL) students from language groups not served by current bilingual programs in the Houston Independent School District (HISD), which are designed for Spanish-speaking ELLs. Currently, CHBP is only implemented for native Vietnamese speakers at one campus,…

Though the oral proficiency interview (OPI) rates the examinee's overall language proficiency in face-to-face interaction, the rating is based solely upon the evaluation of the examinee's contribution in isolation. No attempt is made to evaluate conversational skills in interaction. A criticism that has been made of the OPI is that the format is…

The pressing need for English oral communication skills in multifarious contexts today is compelling impetus behind the large number of studies done on oral proficiency interviewing. Moreover, given the recently articulated concerns with the fairness and social dimension of such interviews, parallel concerns have been raised as to how most fairly…

Because idioms are omnipresent in the authentic language students are exposed to, to successfully comprehend and produce natural language, learners of a second or foreign language need to possess a good knowledge of idioms and competence in idiom use. This paper examines the approaches to teaching and learning idioms. A discussion of the…

The purpose of this research study was to conduct exploratory research to examine federally-mandated annual English language proficiency (ELP) assessment of English language learners (ELLs) and their use of accommodations on the assessment. First the researcher provides a review of the literature regarding accommodations provided for ELLs,…

The goal of this study was to address the relationship between language proficiency, language impairment and rehabilitation in bilingual Russian-English individuals with aphasia. As a first step, we examined two Russian-English patients' pre-stroke language proficiency using a detailed and comprehensive language use and history questionnaire and…

Studies of bilingualism sometimes require healthy subjects to be assessed for proficiency at auditory sentence processing in their second language (L2). The Syntactic Comprehension task of the Bilingual Aphasia Test could satisfy this need. For ease and uniformity of application, we automated its English (Paradis, M., Libben, G., and Hummel, K.…

In line with situated learning perspectives, this article explores the notion of learners' access to participation in social practices. While agreeing with the premise that access to participation in communities of practice is foundational for learning, we problematize simplistic notions of access by investigating how it is sometimes sought after,…

Over 5 million students are learning English in America's public schools, accounting for more than 10% of the K-12 population. That's a 50% increase in the last decade. This demographic change has been matched by changes in national policy. Before No Child Left Behind, states set their own accountability policies. Now, they must demonstrate that…

Lexical proficiency, as a cognitive construct, is poorly understood. However, lexical proficiency is an important element of language proficiency and fluency, especially for second language (L2) learners. Lexical proficiency is also an important attribute of L2 academic achievement. Generally speaking, lexical proficiency comprises breadth of…

This paper reports on a study that investigates the impact of learning context on the L2 acquisition of English by German-speaking pupils. Learning context is operationalized in terms of the relative "prominence" of the L1 and the L2 within the learning context, which in turn reflects the "functional roles" and "domains of use" allocated to the L2…