Teaching Spanish has become increasingly popular in the United States due to demographic shifts. This study focuses on a Spanish-only initiative for an existing Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES) program proposed by a southeastern public school district's school board. It analyzes discourses underlying the policymakers' rationales…

This article reports the findings of a study on the experiences of a small but growing population of Latino students in a small-town secondary school. All teachers and administrators were surveyed regarding their impressions of Latino students. All students in the school (95% White, 5% Latino) were surveyed regarding their impressions of…

Keeping periodic track of the progress English language learners (ELLs) are making in their second language acquisition skills is essential. Learning a second language is a complex process. It's important for educators to gauge each student's abilities and skills regularly; each English language learner will acquire second language knowledge and…

Among linguistic minorities of industrial nations proficiency speaking the dominant national language increases earnings and wages, but do similar results apply to autarkic linguistic minorities of developing nations? We contribute to studies of the returns to language skills by applying the human-capital approach to a society of hunters,…

Whereas most research on child second language acquisition has focused on the oral production of children, studies are needed to illuminate patterns of literacy development in a second language. This paper aims to shed some light on this process, focusing on the English writing development of a native Spanish speaker, and on the Spanish writing…

The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship of student entry data to current English language learning status. District-level data was obtained for 1,942 K-5 native Spanish-speaking elementary-level students administered the oral Spanish and English Language Assessment Scale (Pre-LAS). Canonical correlation analysis was used to…

A significant, but rarely posed, question in EFL writing is what new language the writers assimilate from the process. In this study, a group of intermediate EFL students in a state secondary school in Spain completed an L1(Spanish)-to-FL(English) written translation task on their own, with bilingual dictionary/glossary support. Three days later,…

Although a substantial amount of professional literature argues for the potential benefits of content-based instruction, limited research exists on how this type of instruction actually is appropriated, understood, and carried out in practice by foreign language teachers. This study examines the role of two sixth grade Spanish teachers' discursive…

The call to internationalise the curriculum has become firmly ensconced in Australian educational discourse and university mission statements. Yet, scholars in this area agree that there are few concrete examples of how educators actually set about internationalising the curriculum in a tangible and easily replicable way. This paper adopts a…

As interest and concern rise in U.S. educational circles around the reading achievement of English language learners (ELLs) and struggling readers, researchers and practitioners alike are calling for the increased use of technology as a means to decrease achievement gaps in reading (Jimenez, 2003; Strangman & Dalton, 2005). In this article, we…

As developer and custodian of the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB), the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) is responsible for ensuring that its use meets established professional standards. Considering the logistical problems of overseeing the use of the GATB at more than 2,000 separate sites, the USDOL has confronted a monumental task in the…

The term "Hispanic" is an umbrella term that encompasses people from many nationalities, all races, and many social and cultural groups. Hispanics are also collectively called Latinos. The biographies in this series represent the diversity of Hispanic heritage in the United States. The people featured are contemporary figures of…

The term "Hispanic" is an umbrella term that encompasses people from many nationalities, all races, and many social and cultural groups. Hispanics are also collectively called Latinos. The biographies in this series represent the diversity of Hispanic heritage in the United States. The people featured are contemporary figures of…

The term "Hispanic" is an umbrella term that encompasses people from many nationalities, all races, and many social and cultural groups. Hispanics are also collectively called Latinos. The biographies in this series represent the diversity of Hispanic heritage in the United States. The people featured are contemporary figures of…

It is proposed that explicit explanations of grammar concepts in the first language can be useful in teaching the related structures in a second language. The example used is that of the subjunctive mood, taught first in English and then in Spanish. Specific procedures for presenting the concept in English are outlined, including a set of…