At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), the English Placement Test (EPT) is the institutional placement test that is used to place students into appropriate English as a second language (ESL) writing and/or pronunciation service courses. The EPT is used to assess the English ability of newly admitted international undergraduate…

Typically, English language proficiency tests yield multiple scores--usually for each of the four traditional language domains. In order to maximize the usefulness of test scores, they may need to be accompanied by information concerning how they complement one another. Using self-assessments by some 2300 TOEIC test takers, this study aimed to…

The present research focuses on teachers' perceptions and practices regarding Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and its impact on communicative competency of the students. A questionnaire was used to collect the quantitative data from teachers. The results show that the EFL teachers are aware of the CLT characteristics, its implementation and…

Socio-dramatic play is preschool children's leading learning activity (Karpov 2005; Vygotsky 1978). Yet entering play often poses challenges (Corsaro 2003), particularly for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) children (Hruska 2007). At preschool four-year-old CALD children are both acquiring a new language, and learning new rules, social…

Written corrective feedback has been subject to increasing attention in recent years, in part because of the conceptual controversy surrounding it and in part because of its ubiquitous practice. This study takes a meta-analytic approach to synthesizing extant empirical research, including 21 primary studies. Guiding the analysis are two questions:…

The aim of this paper is to study the implementation of the ERASMUS programme in Turkey from the perspective of the foreign exchange students. The author conducted a survey which included 112 respondents from 8 Turkish universities. In the survey, the respondents assessed the level of language competence, the existence or the lack of sufficient…

This paper proposes a taxonomy of school funding formula elements which distinguishes between funding based on individual student needs and the needs of populations of students based on particular characteristics or labels. This builds on the theoretical approach proposed by Caldwell, Levacic and Ross (1999) where school funding formulae can be…

Introduction: The historical conditions that have developed over the centuries, as well as the migration processes of the 19th and 20th centuries, have determined the multi-ethnic composition of the country's population. Georgia, as a post-Soviet country, has been transitioning from totalitarianism to democracy for the last few years. The country…

Using linked, individual-level data from a large metropolitan K-12 district and a large urban community college district in California, we examine whether indicators of college-readiness for graduating high school students who were initially classified as English Learners (ELs) are honored in community college course placement. In particular, we…

The "Pathway to Academic Success Project" trains teachers to improve the reading and writing abilities of English learners (ELs) who have an intermediate level of English proficiency by incorporating cognitive strategies into reading and writing instruction. This What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) intervention report, part of the WWC's…

The "Pathway to Academic Success Project" trains teachers to improve the reading and writing abilities of English learners (ELs) who have an intermediate level of English proficiency by incorporating cognitive strategies into reading and writing instruction. This What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) intervention report, part of the WWC's…

The "Pathway to Academic Success Project" trains teachers to improve the reading and writing abilities of English learners (ELs) who have an intermediate level of English proficiency by incorporating cognitive strategies into reading and writing instruction. The cognitive strategies include goal setting, tapping prior knowledge, asking…

Building on previous listening strategy research, the author aimed to explore the differences between Chinese high-proficiency listeners (HLs) and low-proficiency listeners (LLs) on their strategy use, problems, and motivation in native language (L1) listening. It involved 1,290 Grade 7 and 1,515 Grade 9 students. Both quantitative and qualitative…

This paper reports on the findings of a study looking at students' motivation to engage in self-access language learning (SALL) while taking an English for Academic Purposes course which contains a substantial integrated SALL component. To-date there has been limited research into the motivation of such students but it is an important area of…

Albeit Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) has been extensively researched, there appears to be limited studies that focus on the effects of multimedia technology (MT) enhanced TBLT approach on EFL development. A study was conducted to examine the effects of a MT imbued TBLT, i.e. Multimedia Task-Based Teaching and Learning (MMTBLT) approach on…