Dual-language immersion programs--in which students learn core subjects (language arts, math, science, and social studies) in both English and a "partner" language--have been gaining in popularity across the United States. Such programs may use a "two-way model," in which roughly half the students are native speakers of the…

The appropriateness of early childhood foreign language education is occasionally a debatable subject among parents, educators, public education administrators and policymakers. A large body of research has been done on this subject and conclusions sometimes appear contradictory. This article first reviews briefly the importance of learning a…

Over the past decade, there have been numerous calls to update U.S. education to reflect an increasingly global world (Hull & Hellmich, 2018). Foreign languages (FLs) are often perceived as central to these efforts (American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2017). Despite this centrality, less is known about how FLs are understood in U.S. K-12…

This study aims to understand the opinions of middle school and high school students about language learning and studying other content in an additional language in the school settings where English is used as the medium of instruction to teach more than 50% of the curriculum. For this end, 261 students from three different schools were…

This study examined the attitudes of nine teachers in a two-way dual-language program in regard to using technology to support the linguistic and academic development of emergent bilinguals. Using a phenomenological, multiple case-study approach, teachers' perceptions about using technology in education and the potential of technology to advance…

Awareness of transcultural pragmatics serves as the foundation for intercultural communicative competence. Explicit teaching of pragmatics in conjunction with intercultural communication training can contribute to the professional development of non-native English-speaking teachers. This article reports on an interdisciplinary attempt to develop a…

As the popularity of two-way immersion (TWI) programs increases across the U.S., recent scholarship has drawn attention to inequities in who benefits from these programs and how they are implemented. These findings have drawn the field's attention to the instrumental part played by particular stakeholders in TWI program implementation. While this…

The Highly Immersive Programme (HIP) was introduced into the Malaysian education scenario with the aims of involving and immersing students in an English environment. Through HIP, it is hoped that students will have better opportunity and platform to use the language confidently, thus improving their English proficiency. HIP is aimed to foster…

This study reports on a small-scale, longitudinal investigation on L2 Spanish oral development by English-home language (EHL) learners in an English/Spanish Two-Way Immersion (TWI) program in rural, eastern United States. It examined EHL learners' oral ability in L2 Spanish based on longitudinal assessment data from Kindergarten, Grade 2, and…

We focus here on the obstacles students face when learning to read in their second language, specifically in contexts where the second language is taught as a school subject or used as a medium of instruction (immersion). Qualitative studies in these areas have highlighted strategy deployment and approaches to constructing meaning as key variables…

This study investigated an emergent interaction between word reading fluency and vocabulary knowledge in the prediction of reading comprehension among French immersion students in Grades 2 and 3. A group of 66 students were tested on measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy, vocabulary, word reading…

The purpose of this study was to create and prototype a dual language assessment task that allows young English learners to use their entire cadre of linguistic resources (language and non-verbal resources) to obtain information about their emergent language abilities. We developed a dual language assessment task in which students described a…

Research on the development of reading skills in bilingual students suggests that reading skills develop interdependently across languages. The current study examined the effects of a French reading fluency intervention on the French and English reading skills of three Grade 3 students attending a French immersion program using a concurrent…

There has been a long history of early Irish language learning in Ireland as a result of Government policy to promote greater use of Irish. All children learn Irish in school from age 4-18 years. The majority learn Irish as a subject, typically for 30-40 minutes per day, and the levels of competence achieved are mostly disappointing. Approximately…

Written from the perspective of a Grade 5/6 French Immersion teacher, this paper examines the role of music, poetry, and the visual arts in enhancing learner identity, in the context of the elementary school classroom. It begins with a focus on artistic metaphors that represent cultural and linguistic hyphenation. It then addresses practical…