This study examines the perception of English vowels by native speakers of Italian. In two preliminary experiments, Italian university students who had lived in Canada for 3 months were found to have difficulty discriminating because they often identified both members of each contrast as instances of a single Italian vowel. The participants in two…

This study investigates whether proficient second language (L2) speakers of Spanish and English use the same parsing strategies as monolinguals when reading temporarily ambiguous sentences containing a complex noun phrase followed by a relative clause, such as "Peter fell in love with the daughter of the psychologist who studied in California."…

A problem facing investigations of implicit and explicit learning is the lack of valid measures of second language implicit and explicit knowledge. This paper attempts to establish operational definitions of these two constructs and reports a psychometric study of a battery of tests designed to provide relatively independent measures of them.…

Research has begun to address the question of transfer of language usage patterns beyond the idea that people's native language (L1) can influence the way they produce a second language (L2). This study investigated bidirectional transfer, of both lexical and grammatical features, in adult speakers of English and Spanish who varied in age of L2…

In this article, I describe mainstream middle school classrooms designed to re-think the conditions under which language minority students who have lived in the United States for a number of years can develop English language skills while also gaining access to a rigorous curriculum. I describe a variety of transactions that students used to…

This article reports on a project that situates language teaching in the subject matter classroom, illustrating how a functional linguistics perspective can raise secondary school teachers' awareness about the language challenges of their discipline and enable them to engage in discussion about language and content with their students. We report…

This article reports the findings of part of a major study exploring the disciplinary writing processes and perceptions of 15 Chinese graduate students in sciences and engineering at a major Canadian university. The findings relate to the thinking languages of the participants in writing disciplinary assignments. The study reveals that whether an…

Globalisation has placed a growing importance on English language speaking and listening. Prior research indicates that many international students from Asia, studying in Australia, face serious learning difficulties and lack confidence in speaking and taking a proactive role in classrooms. The paper reports on data gathered in interviews with…

Finding ways to reduce students' anxiety and maximize the value of learning Greek and Hebrew is a continual challenge for biblical language teachers. Some language teachers use technology tools such as web sites or CDs with audio lessons to improve the experience. Though these tools are helpful, this paper explores the value gained from…

The media calls them the wizards of tomorrow, the fix-it-kids, athletes of the mind, star players, and champs. These are the young people who compete and win academic, artistic, leadership, and service related competitions. Competitors spell words as difficult as autochthonous, make new scientific discoveries, compose poetry, publish their short…

Although learner-centeredness has been widely applied in instruction in the world, this approach has only been cautiously adopted in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching at some institutions in Vietnam. Taking a social constructivist view, this case study explores how a learner-centred perspective is employed in EFL teaching at a teacher…

Culture plays a vital role in second language learning. This paper presents an action research study that investigates the role of culture in a Chinese language program in a kindergarten classroom. Three topics have been explored: (a) culture as the core in the development of a thematic unit on Chinese festivals, (b) a culturally responsive…

One of the difficulties secondary non-Chinese-speaking background (NCSB) learners are facing is to remember the characters learned in order to recall them when necessary. The traditional way of teaching secondary NCSB learners to remember Chinese characters is through mere repetition, e.g. writing out each single character by following its stroke…

A teacher of modern foreign languages (MFL) and a teacher of the visually impaired working in a university college explore and examine the needs of a student with a severe visual impairment embarking upon a course in German. This article sets out to illustrate the needs of both the student and the teachers. It also reflects upon some of the…

Both the objectives of the global approach and the fact that Turkey is facing European integration call for the implementation of concepts like "intercultural learning" and "intercultural understanding" in English language teaching. Although the cultural dimension of language is as important as its linguistic dimension,…