Presents an upper-division Spanish class combining theoretical readings on literacy and hands-on tutoring at reading programs for Spanish-speaking adults as a model for a course with service learning. Undergraduates gain both theoretical and practical knowledge of key issues concerning literacy while providing a needed service to a neglected…

Discusses heritage language students enrolled in Spanish as a foreign language courses. Students and teaching assistants answered questionnaires about course experiences and decisions. Results illustrate student perceptions about their level of expertise in Spanish, the advantages and disadvantages of having heritage fluency in a class of native…

Various studies analyzing pronominal subject expression in Spanish have found that switch-reference, the relationship between two consecutive subjects, is the factor that most commonly constrains speakers' choice of a null or explicit subject personal pronoun (SPP) (Cameron, 1995; Flores-Ferran, 2002). When the second subject in a sequence differs…

U.S. schools are emblematic of the increasingly linguistic and cultural diversity present in this country. Despite this well-documented shift, U.S. foreign language teacher education programs have yet to align learning outcomes with the cognitive and affective needs of linguistically and culturally diverse students. Providing educators with…

Youth strengths are as important to consider as deficits in understanding developmental outcomes and thus are an important component of psychoeducational assessment. Latino/as are understudied with regard to strength-based constructs, although cultural and socioeconomic factors may be related to differences in Latino/a parents' views of their…

This study was conducted to explore the effects of a two-way immersion bilingual program on maintenance/acquisition of Spanish-language proficiency and on reading and mathematics achievement in English over a period of 4 academic years. The researchers used Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) techniques to compare the effects of two different…

This paper analyses how two multicompetent speakers engage with protocolling, i.e. verbalising their thoughts, while writing in two languages different from their first. The study explores how procedure- and language-related episodes of awareness affect both the writing process itself and the written product. The research draws on current issues…

Blogs and podcasts open new ways for global communication and development of intercultural awareness. This article reports a Spanish-American telecollaborative project through which students created blogs and podcasts for intercultural exchanges in light of the sociocultural perspectives. The article outlines the methodology for the project…

Study abroad (SA) is one of the flagship offerings among United States higher education institutions. Approximately 220,000 students studied abroad in the 2005/2006 academic year, 52.8% of whom studied on programs that lasted eight weeks or less. The effect of these short-term programs on second language development has been little investigated,…

Parent-professional partnership literature continues to emphasize the importance of including the parent voice. Spanish-speaking families are often excluded from such studies because of the language barrier. This article presents a qualitative interview study of eight Latina mothers of children with severe disabilities. All participants were…

Speaking tasks involving peer-to-peer candidate interaction are increasingly being incorporated into language proficiency assessments, in both large-scale international testing contexts, and in smaller-scale, for example course-related, ones. This growth in the popularity and use of paired and group orals has stimulated research, particularly into…

This article reports findings of a Study in Mexico program and its potential for transforming teacher beliefs and observations about schooling in Mexico. This particular program has been in existence for 17 years; however, findings for this study are limited to data collected during two consecutive summers. The study was qualitative in design, and…

Second language acquisition (SLA) researchers strive to understand the language and exchanges that learners generate in synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC). Doughty and Long (2003) advocate replacing open-ended SCMC with task-based language teaching (TBLT) design principles. Since most task-based SCMC (TB-SCMC) research addresses an…

This chapter examines the characteristics and performance of adult immigrants and adult English language learners on the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. These factors are related to key social outcomes such as involvement in the labor force, income, and welfare participation, and the data reported can be used in making decisions about…

Much has been written on the effects of Mexican immigration in the U.S., but little exists regarding the ways in which transnationals, who have returned to Mexico, have adapted to and/or transformed Mexican society and the education system. This article is based on a descriptive qualitative study of five transnational teachers of English in Mexico…