First-language (L1) and 2nd-language (L2) oral language skills and L2 word reading were used as predictors to test the simple view of reading as a model of 2nd-language reading comprehension. The simple view of reading states that reading comprehension is related to decoding and oral language comprehension skills. One hundred thirty-one…

Bilinguals spontaneously switch languages in conversation even though laboratory studies reveal robust cued language switching costs. The authors investigated how voluntary-switching costs might differ when switches are voluntary. Younger (Experiments 1-2) and older (Experiment 3) Spanish-English bilinguals named pictures in 3 conditions: (a)…

As a sixth year student of Spanish looking back on her foreign language education, the author believes she has a greater understanding of what attracted her to and maintained her interest in the language. Yet she also recognizes areas in her education that could have benefited from change, including flexibility in creating her own program of study…

It is well established that variation in caregivers' speech is associated with language outcomes, yet little is known about the learning principles that mediate these effects. This longitudinal study (n = 27) explores whether Spanish-learning children's early experiences with language predict efficiency in real-time comprehension and vocabulary…

A study was conducted to determine whether the measures used to identify native English speakers who are at risk for reading difficulties could also be used for identifying English learners who were at a similar risk. Additionally it was investigated whether English learners should be assessed in the language of instruction, English, or in their…

Childhood experience with a language seems to help adult learners speak it with a more native-like accent. Can analogous benefits be found beyond phonology? This study focused on adult learners of Spanish who had spoken Spanish as their native language before age 7 and only minimally, if at all, thereafter until they began to re-learn Spanish…

The greatest challenge inhibiting the ability of English-language learners (ELLs) to read at the appropriate grade level is perhaps a lack of sufficient vocabulary development. While extensive reading is beneficial, these students must acquire the necessary vocabulary in order to read extensively. Both vocabulary breadth and vocabulary depth are…

Focusing on reading methods and practices in rural Indian Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century, this article explains why schooling had little impact in terms of literacy in Spanish yet played a successful political and ceremonial role resulting in what I call a ritual literacy. At the time, the emerging educational system did not consider…

Recent evidence suggests that culture is a dynamic construct activated in response to cues encountered in a given situation. Research on acculturation indicates that this is a complex construct that might be domain specific. Two studies were undertaken to investigate the effect of two ways of priming culture on acculturation and enculturation…

One aspect of linguistic input that may vary in bilingual speech communities is the use of overregularization (e.g., "catched"). In an earlier study, typically developing bilingual Spanish/English-speaking children were noted to use overregularizations in an elicited production task, accept these forms in a grammaticality judgment task, and reject…

Last spring, the author distributed a survey to majors and minors in Hispanic studies at Connecticut College and at other schools to informally gather student attitudes toward the nature of Hispanic-studies courses as it pertained to their interests and goals. Although results were somewhat predictable, an unexpected finding was that of 148…

This study presents a profile of Spanish as an international language and offers the most recent information on its demographics. The countries in which Spanish is the official language as well as the territories where it is not the official language are considered. The work compares the number of Spanish speakers with the number of other…

The present study sought to observe, through online treatments, whether explicit information assists acquisition in a way that has not been measured in previous processing instruction (PI) studies. Two experiments examined learners' behavior while they processed Spanish sentences with object-verb-subject (OVS) word order and Spanish subjunctive…

Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) has been the subject of a wide range of studies over the last twenty years. Previous research suggests that CSCL exchanges can facilitate group-based learning and knowledge construction among learners who are in different geographical locations [Littleton, K. & Whitelock, D. (2004). "Guiding the…

Do proficient, bilingual readers of Spanish and English use different strategies when reading passages written in each language? Are there differences in the frequency with which proficient, bilingual readers of Spanish and English use particular strategies when reading these passages? Are there patterns in the manner in which the subjects use the…