Studied the importance of language in student test performance on mathematics word problems using items from the National Assessment of Educational Progress mathematics assessment. Results for 1,174 eighth graders show that students who were English language learners scored lower on the math test than proficient English speakers and that…

Investigates sex and language proficiency differences in the color-naming performance of Chinese-speaking English learners at the university level. Data were obtained on color terms used by 40 females and 40 males in naming 40 color stimuli. An interest related variable, five demographic factors, and seven language proficiency indices were…

The number of international faculty members in the United States is steadily increasing. However, few of these instructors have formal training in pedagogy and many experience at least some communication difficulties. To address the needs of nonnative-speaking instructors at an urban college in New York, an international faculty program was…

Drawing on the unique opportunities that physical education settings provide, physical education specialists can assist English language learners (ELLs) in developing language by implementing language objectives in their lessons. Language objectives encourage teachers to provide explicit language instruction and language support for students who…

In this paper the L2-Dutch of a group of adolescent Moroccans living in the Netherlands is studied. Four tasks were administered to these informants, to a number of Dutch peers, and to some of the mothers of the Moroccan informants. These tasks were designed to test if the informants were able to cope with complex sentences, such as sentences with…

In this study, we test the prediction, derived from the Critical Period Hypothesis, that a native level in L2 grammar cannot be attained by learners who start acquiring a second language after childhood. We selected 43 very advanced late learners of Dutch (native speakers of German, French and Turkish) and compared their performance on a grammar…

This article discusses design and usability issues pertaining to context-sensitive "help" in computer-assisted language learning (CALL). As part of the discussion, we present a study in which we examined the effects of three independent factors on student usage of context-sensitive "help": feedback, exercise type, and language proficiency. Forty…

Vocabulary acquisition is a critical component of academic language. This aspect of the school curriculum seems to be more difficult for language learners to acquire. This study therefore examines the language arts conceptual framework and the instructional activities for vocabulary development in a second grade mixed classroom with a view to…

A core area of phonology is the study of phonotactics, or how sounds are linearly combined. Recent cross-linguistic analyses have shown that the phonology determines not only phonotactics but also the articulatory coordination or timing of adjacent sounds. In this article, I explore how the relation between coordination and phonotactics affects…

The empirical study reported here investigated predictors of oral proficiency gain to the Advanced level resulting from immersion study abroad. The data consisted of 22 preimmersion Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) of American students who participated in semester immersion programs in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and received a score of…

This study carried out at Lander University attempts to make a qualitative comparison between the contributions to a student newspaper made by foreign students and American students as well as make some analytical assessments as to the focus and world view brought to bear on the writings in the student paper. It shows that foreign students…

This study examines the effect and validity of accommodations for limited English proficiency (LEP) students in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the impact of language factors on the assessment and accommodation of these students. Results indicate that accommodations used in NAEP did not reduce the performance gap between…

This article brings theory into practice and demonstrates clearly how to apply commonly accepted language acquisition theories to science lesson plans designed for native speakers of English. In the first section of the article, readers will learn not only how to apply theory to science lessons, but also, and more important, why to apply certain…

This paper examines the role that cultural identity and grassroots activism and community development have played in the creation, maintenance and expansion of Louisiana French immersion education. Although linguists tend to portray the extinction of endangered minority languages as inevitable, research on the effects of minority language…

This paper reports on an empirical study of street language, a multilingual youth register in the Netherlands. Nearly 300 secondary school students completed a questionnaire on their acquaintance with and use of street language. A subsample of students was also interviewed. Use of street language will be related to background information about the…