This study reports data collected from a survey of 140 Texas bilingual program directors to explore the use of accountability data for program decision making. Examined are findings related to the availability, kinds of decisions made, and evaluation activities conducted using 11 sources of data (i.e., the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills,…

This commentary addresses the use of nativelikeness and non-nativelikeness in research relating to the age factor in L2A. I suggest that, in the context of the Critical Period Hypothesis as it applies to L2A, the criteria of nativelikeness and non-nativelikeness may be subject to abuse. I also argue that the use of the monolingual native standard…

In order to obtain concrete information to improve test writing, this study analyzes 13 achievement test drafts written by graduate teaching assistants, lecturers, and adjunct faculty teaching introductory and intermediate college Spanish. The analysis focuses on factors of test method and content likely to create variance in test performance…

This article investigates the effects of the maintenance of Japanese as a heritage language on English and overall academic achievement. The interrelationships among Japanese oral and writing proficiency, SAT I Verbal, SAT I, and high school grade point average (GPA) were examined. The participants were 31 second generation Japanese-American…

Articulation is one of the principal challenges of all foreign language programs. A key component of the articulation process is an assessment of student language abilities. On college and university campuses this process is usually conducted via a placement test. As developments in proficiency research have progressed, it is clear that programs…

This paper reviews the process a university foreign language department went through in developing a procedure to assess its curriculum using the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and, to a lesser extent, the National Standards, as guiding principles (National Standards, 1996). This procedure included a noncredit workshop that met only once to inform…

This study examines current patterns of oral communication strategy (OCS) use, to what degree these strategies can be explicitly taught, and the extent to which strategy use can lead to improvements in oral communication ability. In a 12-week English as a Foreign Language (EFL) course based on a communicative approach, 62 female learners were…

In this study, the effects of second language (i.e., L2) proficiency and age of second language acquisition are assessed. Three types of bilinguals are compared: Early L2 learners, Late highly proficient L2 learners, and Late less proficient L2 learners. A lexical decision priming paradigm is used in which the critical trials consist of first…

This paper addresses the problem of placing and teaching heritage speakers of immigrant languages in college-level foreign language programmes, drawing conclusions from research on heritage speakers of Russian. For pedagogical purposes, heritage speakers cannot be viewed either as native speakers of the target language or as foreign language…

Individuals with Asperger Syndrome (AS), a high functioning variant of Autism, are often noted to possess intact language ability, yet fail to use this language capacity to engage in interactive communication. This difficulty using language in a social context has been referred to as a deficit in pragmatic language. In particular, difficulty…

Teachers who are facing multiple languages and cultures in their classrooms for the first time may be fooled by the English Language Learner who has become proficient in English. That competence in social communication may disguise difficulty with understanding and generating academic language. Through two profiles of middle school students who…

Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, the authors focused on the relation between pre-school classroom experiences and the development of later comprehension skills in ethnic minority children whose first language is different from the language they learn in (pre-)school. In Study 1, the relation between pre-school playgroup…

The use of dictionaries in second language proficiency examinations has been the subject of controversy and debate for a good many years. Debate often focuses on how dictionary availability impacts on examination performance as measured, for example, by test scores or by the quality of test-taker responses. This article presents findings of an…

This paper presents a study that attributes verb serialization in the interlanguage of Vietnamese-speaking ESL learners to language transfer and, furthermore, puts forward the view that such transfer bears a resemblance to substrate influence in creoles with serial verb constructions (SVCs). In a task that elicited English causatives through…

This paper describes a study in which we investigated the effects of corrective feedback on learner uptake in CALL. Learner uptake is here defined as learner responses to corrective feedback in which, in case of an error, students attempt to correct their mistake(s). 177 students from three Canadian universities participated in the study during…