Due to demographic changes, teachers in mainstream U.S. classrooms now work with English language learners (ELLs) in larger numbers than ever before (Sheng, Sheng, & Anderson, 2011). US schools have been diversifying for decades, and students whose first language is not English are the fastest growing population of students in US schools…

This study focused on the use of a standardized reading assessment to examine reading comprehension among English language learners (ELLs) and English fluent middle school students, focusing on two text genres: informational and narrative. The Common Core State Standards require students to develop skills in both genres. However, ELLs may not…

A critical piece of teacher education is to create opportunities for teachers to come to understand their cultural selves and the ways in which they intersect with the cultures of their students. Such understanding is an essential quality of culturally responsive pedagogy, a prospective means of transforming education for historically marginalized…

The purpose of this study is to find out the effect of Jigsaw I technique on students' academic success and attitude towards the course in teaching Turkish grammar. For that purpose, three grammar topics (spelling and punctuation marks rules) were determined and an experimental study conforming to "control group preliminary-testing final…

The world has been changing, information sources have been diversifying; and the importance of reading book has been gradually increasing. Books' constituting a place in life children as vitally important in developing their learning and imagination depends upon their close surrounding and essentially their learning Turkish. Therefore, in this…

This study draws upon activity theory to better understand the implications of corrective feedback (CF) as an artifact on (1) the coconstruction of knowledge and (2) the action-oriented decisions of 10 mixed pairs comprising a foreign language learner (FLL) and a heritage language learner (HLL) of Spanish. To this end, the dyads were divided into…

Can an early learned second language influence speech production after living many years in an exclusively monolingual environment? To address this issue, we investigated the consequences of discontinued early bilingualism in heritage speakers who moved abroad and switched language dominance from the second to the primary learned language. We used…

This study reports on the acquisition of quantity contrasts in Guina-ang Bontok, an indigenous language spoken in the Philippines. Four-year-old and 5-year-old children's perception and production of quantity contrasts were examined using a pair of names that contrast in the quantity of the medial nasal. Frequencies of the quantity contrast were…

Much research has been conducted on factors that impact on second language (L2) speech production in light of the age of L2 acquisition, the length of residence in the L2 environment, motivation, the amount of first language (L1) usage, etc. Very little of this research has taken the perspective of interference between L1 and L2, especially with…

The current study investigated whether monolingual adult speakers of Turkish and bilingual adult speakers of Arabic and Turkish significantly differ regarding their spoken productions in Turkish. Accordingly, two groups of undergraduate students studying Turkish Language and Literature at a state university in Turkey were presented two videos on a…

This study investigates intercultural competence of International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) students and non-IBDP students and whether it is affected by some variants such as grade, gender, nationality, being a native speaker of English, living in an English speaking country and travelling abroad. The data is gathered from the…

A major problem in second language acquisition (SLA) is the segmentation of fluent speech in the target language, i.e., detecting the boundaries of phonological constituents like words and phrases in the speech stream. To this end, among a variety of cues, people extensively use prosody and statistical regularities. We examined the role of pitch,…

Development of environmental literacy needs an interdisciplinary effort. Especially language classes, with environment related texts, have potential to support environmental literacy. In this research it is aimed to analyze the Turkish language course books in terms of components of environmental literacy. To this end, four Turkish course books…

This study investigated the contexts for "optimal" use of first language (L1) in second language (L2) one-on-one speaking practice sessions in a study abroad program where English was the L1 and Arabic was the L2 of students, and the opposite applied to their speaking partners. Drawing on insights from sociocultural theory to investigate…

Despite a well-documented history of immigration in the United States of America and rise in population of students that speak a language other than English, academic achievement gaps between English Language Learners and their native English language speaking counterparts from Grades Pre-Kindergarten through the college/university level still…