The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires all states to assess the English proficiency of English language learners each school year. Under Title I and Title III of No Child Left Behind, states are required to measure the annual growth of students' English language development in reading, listening, writing, and speaking and in comprehension…

In an attempt to unify the nation's naturalisation policies, Germany has introduced compulsory language tests as a prerequisite for citizenship. Reactions to this new policy have been sharply divided. After a brief introduction to the sociocultural demography of modern Germany, critical insights are provided into controversial use of literacy as a…

This article reports on a study investigating the use of 2 synchronous computer-mediated communication tools: text and voice chat. The experimental design employed 3 groups (text, voice, and control), each consisting of 30 novice-level secondary school learners of English as a foreign language. Over a 4-week period, the participants in the…

Whereas most research in SLA assumes the relationship between the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) to be unidirectional, this study investigates the possibility of a bidirectional relationship. We examine the domain of manner of motion, in which monolingual Japanese and English speakers differ both in speech and gesture. Parallel…

In this article, the author talks about a dual language program in a New York City public school, "Nuestros Amigos". This program's goal is for the school's African American and Hispanic students to develop proficiency in both English and Spanish as prescribed in New York State and City English Language Arts and Native Language Arts…

This study investigated the recognition of Swedish inflected nouns in two participant groups. Both groups were Finnish-speaking late learners of Swedish, but the groups differed in regard to their Swedish language proficiency. In a visual lexical decision task, inflected Swedish nouns from three frequency ranges were contrasted with corresponding…

A number of studies have shown that approximately one-quarter of children in potentially bilingual environments do not become bilingual. This article explores several key factors that influence the likelihood that a child who has access to interactions in two languages will learn them both. The five factors discussed are input, language status,…

This article presents a proficiency-oriented approach to teaching feature films in the first- and second-year classroom. It argues that film is currently under utilized at the Basic and Independent User levels, particularly as a means to create context in the classroom. Strategies are presented to tap the potential of film for communicative…

This article describes a genre-based literacy pedagogy which can be used with English language learners. The pedagogy discussed involves a combination of two explicit teaching methodologies, a genre-based and activity-based pedagogical approach. The pedagogy was introduced in an English Club at a local Hong Kong school, as part of a collaborative…

Sensitivity to prosodic cues might be used to constrain lexical search. Indeed, the prosodic organization of speech is such that words are invariably aligned with phrasal prosodic edges, providing a cue to segmentation. In this paper we devise an experimental paradigm that allows us to investigate the interaction between statistical and prosodic…

Large-class English teaching is an inexorable trend in many Chinese universities and colleges, which leads to a strange and serious phenomenon that most students' English is ironically but vividly described as "the dumb English". Therefore, cultivating students' communicative skills and developing their language competence has become a…

The purpose of this study was two-fold: it primarily intended to incorporate some insights into the newly-explored field of L3A: secondly, it aimed to highlight the significance of translation as a valid language activity in exploring the native language influence on non-native language acquisition process. To this end, it investigated the…

This article offers a critical reflection upon underlying theoretical and philosophical inclinations which manifest themselves through the type of courses introduced in higher education institutions to meet what is perceived to be students' educational needs. Given the fact that this article seeks to promote an understanding of the nature of…

This experimental study was intended to raise learner autonomy among Iranian native speakers of Persian in their L2 (English) and L3 (Arabic) reading comprehension through cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies instruction (CMRSI). The subjects of the study were divided into intermediate and advanced English language proficiency levels and…

In this study, I explore the experiences of five Japanese returnees ("kikokushijo"). The participants recorded taped monologues or wrote narratives reflecting on their time spent living abroad and of returning to Japan. These retrospective life stories revealed four prominent themes of conflict: group orientation; bullying and…