Learning another language is very much affected by positive or negative connotations attached to the new language by the language learner. Entering Malaysian public universities there are many students with a low proficiency in English, despite spending eleven years studying English in schools. Could it be that the lack of progress among these…

English pronunciation self-concept is formed in the process of pronunciation learning, which refers to the learners' self-conception and assessment of one's English pronunciation proficiency and pronunciation (Gimson, A. C. 1980). This paper reports an investigation on 237 non-English major college students into the relationship between English…

The principal aim of this project is to examine whether academic service-learning deserves a more intentional place in foreign language programs, given its success on the individual course level. The focus will be on Spanish language programs, since they teach the most commonly learned foreign language in the United States and have proven to be on…

There is little consensus among different early childhood education stakeholders in Hong Kong on whether it is beneficial or detrimental for children to receive an English bilingual education before the age of 6. This longitudinal study investigated the issue of potential "detrimental effects of learning English" on Hong Kong…

Executive functioning (EF) refers to a set of higher order, core cognitive processes that facilitate planning, problem solving, and the initiation and maintenance of goal-directed behavior. Although recent research has established the importance of EF for word reading development in early childhood, few studies have investigated the role of EF in…

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…

This study examines the roles of proficiency and working memory (WM) capacity in second-/foreign-language (L2) learners' processing of agreement morphology. It investigates the processing of grammatical and ungrammatical short- and long-distance number agreement dependencies by native English speakers at two proficiencies in French, and the…

Seventh and 8th grade English-learners in selected urban schools will soon dive into some of the most celebrated speeches in U.S. history. They'll dissect, for example, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," and Robert F. Kennedy's "On the Death of Martin Luther King." Though their…

This study investigates the effectiveness of using dictogloss in making students notice and reproduce key vocabulary and highlighted structural features in a college intermediate level Arabic L2 class. Dictogloss is a technique used in second language classes to make students pay attention to the relationship between form and meaning. Students…

This study examines socioeconomic status (SES), English language proficiency (ELP), vocabulary proficiency (VP), and math proficiency (MP) of students to determine if SES, as determined by the Free and Reduced Lunch Program (FRL), as well as English language proficiency (ELP) and vocabulary proficiency (VP), as measured by CELLA scale scores and…

This dissertation presents the findings of an on-line survey completed by 222 FYC (First Year Composition) instructors at universities and community colleges across the United States along with supplemental information derived from multiple open-ended interviews with seven FYC instructors in Arizona. Both survey and interview questions were…

Previous Language Testing research has largely reported that although many raters' characteristics affect their evaluations of language assessments (Reed & Cohen, 2001), being a native speaker or non-native speaker rater does not significantly affect final ratings (Kim, 2009). In Second Language Acquisition, some researchers conclude that…

This study examined the second language (L2) acquisition of the Korean plural marker -"tul" by native speakers of English. Seventy-seven learners at four Korean proficiency levels along with 31 native Korean-speaking controls completed five tasks designed to probe for knowledge of particular features and restrictions associated with so-called…

Top-down models of reading emphasize methods and techniques that promote active reading which involves utilizing contextual clues to guess vocabulary meaning. This study aims at analyzing the correlation between EFL students' general reading proficiency and guessing patterns, and identifying the types of contextual clues actually used by EFL…

This article presents the CercleS European Language Portfolio for university students in its translated Italian form. The illustration of the translation process takes inspiration from Rudyard Kipling's poem "I keep six honest serving men" and answers the questions What? Why? When? How? Where? and Who? in explaining how the task was…