Nepal is a multilingual country with low adult literacy rate (about 57% in 2008). Through different policy documents and motivation from some of the transnational organizations such as UNESCO, Nepal is on the process of adopting lifelong learning perspective as a major educational policy. In this context the article raises two issues: how to…

The growing population of young English language learners (ELLs) in American schools creates an urgency for educators to understand, value, and support the wide array of students' native language practices as a way to support both the ELLs' first language and their native cultures and communities. Considerable research shows the importance of…

The purpose of this guidebook is to provide guidance to school districts in completing their local Tribal Education Status Report (TESR). Any data that is reported in the local TESRs has to comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) which is a Federal law that protects the privacy of…

Speech sounds are not always perceived in accordance with their acoustic-phonetic content. For example, an early and automatic process of perceptual repair, which ensures conformity of speech inputs to the listener's native language phonology, applies to individual input segments that do not exist in the native inventory or to sound sequences that…

How do infants use their knowledge of native language sound patterns when learning words? There is ample evidence of infants' precocious acquisition of native language sound structure during the first year of life, but much less evidence concerning how they apply this knowledge to the task of associating sounds with meanings in word learning. To…

Previous research has demonstrated substantially improved second language (L2) vocabulary learning when spoken word forms are varied using multiple talkers, speaking styles, or speaking rates. In contrast, the present study varied visual representations of referents for target vocabulary. English speakers learned Spanish words in formats of no…

This article highlights how English language learners' (ELLs) prior knowledge can be used to help learn science vocabulary. The article explains that the concept of prior knowledge needs to encompass the ELL student's native language, previous science learning, native literacy skills, and native cultural knowledge and life experiences.…

The influences of word decoding, availability, and accessibility of semantic word knowledge on reading comprehension were investigated for monolingual "("n = 65) and bilingual children ("n" = 70). Despite equal decoding abilities, monolingual children outperformed bilingual children with regard to reading comprehension and…

This study constitutes the first statistical analysis to employ a Bayesian multinomial probit model in the investigation of subject expression in first and second language (L2) Spanish. The study analyzes the use of third-person subject-expression forms and demonstrates that the following variables are important for subject expression:…

This article reports on how, against a background of relatively stable patterns of second language negation, a Japanese-speaking adult learning English made use of a negative formula, "I don't know," and how, in and through interaction, analyzed it into its component parts and began using "don't" more productively.…

This article investigates the linguistic tools employed by Hispanic Canadian families in their language socialization efforts of fostering sustained heritage language (HL) use. The article is based on data collected during a 1½-year ethnography, and focuses on the metapragmatic devices used in daily interactions. Utilizing analytic tools from the…

This essay contributes to the research on the emergence of tense/aspect morphology by reviewing the results and task conditions of studies supporting either the Aspect Hypothesis (AH) or the Default Past Tense Hypothesis (DPTH) for second language (L2) learners of Spanish. The AH has found that past marking emerges based on inherent aspectual…

This study explores oscillatory brain activity by means of event-related synchronization and desynchronization (%ERS/ERD) of EEG activity during the use of phonological and orthographic-morphological spelling strategies in L2 (English) and L1 (German) in native German speaking children. EEG was recorded while 33 children worked on a task requiring…

We present an original model designed to study how a second language (L2) is acquired in bilinguals at different proficiencies starting from an existing L1. The model assumes that the conceptual and lexical aspects of languages are stored separately: conceptual aspects in distinct topologically organized Feature Areas, and lexical aspects in a…

Competency in society's lingua franca plays a major role in the emergence of social disparities within education. Therefore, the present longitudinal study investigates vocabulary development and its predictors in preschool years. We focus on whether internal (phonological working memory) and external variables (preschool and home learning…