This study set out to empirically determine the reliability and validity of the Vocabulary Levels Tests, both the passive and productive versions. Furthermore, attempt was made to investigate the nature of the students' vocabulary knowledge with regard to their passive and active knowledge of the L2 words as a whole and at different word frequency…

The goal of the current study was to examine the influence of providing more optimal testing conditions and evaluate the effect this has on the validity of the score inferences across ELL students with different needs, strengths, and levels of language proficiency. It was expected that the validity of the score inferences would be similar for 3rd…

"CLASS Professional Standards" is a resource for Chinese teachers, foreign language specialists, school administrators, parents, and policy makers who recognize the importance of Chinese cultures taught by professional teachers of Chinese. The release of the book also marks the celebration of the Chinese Language Association of…

The education of pragmatics is necessary and important in our globalized world. The reason is that English is currently used by people in the world for interaction and communication with each other in order to do international trade or participate in the academic conferences (McKay, 2002). For avoiding miscommunication caused by cultural…

This report summarizes Austin ISD's bilingual and English as a second language (ESL) program for students during the 2006-2007 school year. The school district served 13,162 students in a bilingual program, 5,280 students in an ESL program, and 822 students whose parents refused bilingual or ESL programming. Most (77%) students served were in…

For the monolingual population, research has shown that vocabulary knowledge is closely related to reading achievement. However, the role of vocabulary has not been studied as extensively in the bilingual population. It is important to look at vocabulary to better understand reading achievement in the bilingual population in the United States.…

This paper reports a longitudinal quasiexperimental study that investigated the effectiveness of a theme-based syllabus versus an essentially grammatical syllabus with functional elements for young Turkish learners of English (aged 10-11) in a primary school setting. The theme-based syllabus rested on two different theoretical premises, one being…

This study examines out-of-school use of Irish and motivation to learn Irish among final year post-primary students from three different instructional backgrounds: mainstream students studying ordinary and higher level Irish as a subject only and immersion students. Information on motivation and use is linked to student proficiency in Irish.…

English language learners are students with a primary language other than English who have a limited range of speaking, reading, writing, and listening skills in English. English language learners also include students identified and determined by their school as having limited English proficiency and a language other than English spoken in the…

The United States has been engaged in school reform for three decades. The federal government as well as all fifty states have passed numerous versions of reform legislation to mandate and regulate the process. Educators have adjusted their practices to the policy created by this legislation. They have also allocated hundreds of billions of…

Basic English Writing (BEW) courses have been part of English learning curricula in many universities. Some research has been conducted to investigate various class designs for English language courses. However, class designs for English writing are not yet abundantly developed to provide more experimental results. The purpose of this study was to…

This study investigated the relationship between attitudinal/motivational factors and English second language proficiency among student teachers. Subjects were 198 full-time, first-year teacher trainees in a Hong Kong college of education, of traditional college age and enrolled in both 2- and 3-year English-medium and Chinese-medium instructional…

This guide offers advice on the assessment of the language development abilities of bilingual preschool children. A brief review of general bilingual child language development, including mixing and loss or semilingualism, is followed by a review of current assessment practices. A language assessment procedure developed for the State of California…

This book is about language prejudice as experienced by Puerto Ricans in the mainland United States. Prejudice is expressed as social signs that include, but go well beyond, language. When people express linguistic prejudices, they generally start by objectifying the languages in question as though the languages were sharply defined. For Puerto…

This paper discusses research conducted in the spring of 1991 that measured the relationship of reading subtest scores to teacher ratings of students' reading abilities. Sixty-eight advanced-level students in an intensive English program took an institutional version of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and a specimen reading…