Studies of Mexican and Puerto Rican communities living in the same United States cities suggest that a combination of historical factors and local conditions strongly influence to what extent these two groups interact and form a shared sense of pan-ethnic Latino unity. However, few studies have examined "MexiRican" individuals, those who…

Previous accounts of morphological variability disagree over whether its cause is representational or computational in nature. Under a computational account, variability is confined to production; under a representational account, variability extends to comprehension and is qualitatively similar to variability in production. This article presents…

This article reports on a study that analysed life history accounts of language learning. The key aim of the study was to understand how the experience of language learning was discursively constructed through recourse to particular cultural worlds and narrative strategies. The study contributes to the growing field of research using language…

In this study, we examined the presence of differential item functioning (DIF) among groups of students who were tested in their native language or in a different language when participating in the 1999 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. Data from 18,837 examinees from three countries (Singapore, United States, and Iran) were…

Null direct objects provide a favourable testing ground for grammatical and performance models of argument omission. This article examines both types of models in order to determine which gives a more plausible account of the second language data. The data were collected from second language (L2) learners of Spanish by means of four oral…

Most current idiom processing models acknowledge, after Gernsbacher and Robertson (1999) that deriving an idiomatic meaning entails suppression of contextually inappropriate, literal meanings of idiom constituent words. While embedding idioms in the rich disambiguating context can promote earlier suppression of incompatible literal meanings,…

This study is to investigate whether self-assessment contains construct-irrelevant variances of gender and age, and whether self-assessment correlates with test scores. The data were collected from seventy-eight newly arrived international students at the English Language Center, Michigan State University, USA. Prior to class commencement, they…

This study aims to examine the feasibility of a number of technical solutions implemented in a web-based system designed for the creation and management of online language exams within PAULEX Universitas, a project for the development of an online platform to design, deliver and assess the foreign language exam within the Spanish national…

The Problem: The purpose of this study was to identify and analyze the information structure of native-English speaking (NES) ESOL teachers in giving explanations in a grammar class at an Intensive English Program (IEP) at a university in southern California Method: This mixed-method study employed a sequential-exploratory design. Six grammar…

Second language (L2) oral performance assessment always involves raters' subjective judgments and is thus subject to rater variability. The variability due to rater characteristics has important consequential impacts on decision-making processes, particularly in high-stakes testing situations (Bachman, Lynch, & Mason, 1995; A. Brown, 1995;…

This article reviews how a receptive, bilingual four-year-old increased her Spanish productive-language skills over five weeks as she engaged in Spanish-language play sessions with bilingual peers. The data show her growing participation in group verbal interactions along with her growing production of her weaker language. In addition, a…

Background/Context: While different instructional approaches have been proposed to integrate academic content and English proficiency for English language learning (ELL) students, studies examining the magnitude of the relationship are non-existent. This study examined the relationship between the "form" (i.e., conventions, organization, and…

This article reports on an empirical study that examines general academic difficulties, and academic reading and writing difficulties among Asian ESL (English as a Second Language) international postgraduate students who are completing a Master's Degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) at an Australian university. The…

Latino youth in a low-income urban community are at high risk of exposure to violence. Given an accumulation of factors before, during, and after migration, immigrant youth might be at increased risk of exposure to violence and other relevant stressors (e.g., acculturation stress, language proficiency, acculturation/enculturation, and parental…

The current study aimed to diagnose the probable significant differences in the use of language learning strategies among medical-text readers of opposite sex from different levels of proficiency. 120 (N = 120) participants were randomly selected from Azad Medical University of Mashhad: 60 medical students (age range 23-25; 30 = male and 30 =…