By 2050, Latinos will account for 25 percent of the U.S. population. Despite their increasing numbers, many children of immigrants consider themselves members of a minority group in a way that negatively affects their behavior, school performance, and social integration. Educators need to develop a better understanding of the culture and issues…

This case study looked at the transition of preservice teachers from world language education methods courses at a major U.S. university to a 5-week field experience in secondary school classrooms. Data included lesson plans and self-critiques of two lessons implemented during the field experience, world language teaching philosophies the…

Recent reform initiatives, especially the No Child Left Behind Act, tend to rely on a variety of highly debatable assumptions that fail to reflect the diversity of today's classrooms and also place pressure on educators in a manner we characterize as accountability by assumption. Such reform initiatives have become so political, complex, and…

This is a study of the assessment of the speaking skills of adult learners of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL). It is prompted by a concern that participants can have differing expectations of what nature of speech event a speaking test actually is. This concern was identified during the administration and analysis of assessments…

This study, based on ethnographic methods, explores how the professional identities of a group of bilingual (Spanish/English) Latino/a teachers-in-the-making in an urban public school district in the USA are formed and enacted. It illustrates the national and local discourses that influence novice bilingual teachers in their professional…

This article gives an overview of a piece of qualitative research conducted at a women's university in the United Arab Emirates. The aim of the study was to evaluate the English language peer tutoring programme in order to highlight benefits and challenges, and to make informed improvements. The study drew particularly on participant perceptions…

In this article, I examine the assimilationist assumptions embedded in the development and implementation of the Texas Reading Proficiency Test in English (RPTE). The RPTE was designed as a developmental bridge for English language learner (ELL) students to perform on the English Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). These assumptions…

The teaching of grammar is discussed from an instrumental point of view: what beneficial effects does such teaching have for students' language abilities (especially writing)? Two ways of approaching grammar teaching are confronted with each other: the learning of explicit rules and meta-linguistic knowledge about language on one hand and learning…

Poetry performance is an approach to learning where students can use theatrical techniques to develop a response to the poem. This paper argues that ELL students can explore the aesthetic function of language and, more widely, develop confidence in using English as a communicative tool through the dramatization of poetry. We describe the process…

This empirical investigation compares the ability of adult multilingual learners of English to perform a metalinguistic task involving paying close attention to meaning and/or form in target utterances/sentences varying in semantic appropriateness and grammatical correctness. In a listening task, adult multilingual learners of English heard these…

As recent second language acquisition (SLA) studies have shown, the negotiation of linguistic items such as vocabulary, verb tenses, and grammar rules with different types of interlocutors--native speakers (NSs) and advanced non-native speakers (NNSs) of English--seems to facilitate second language development among students. Findings from…

Research has found that text reading and Web reading, while sharing some similarities, require a different balance of strategies. Adult language learners, especially those with limited previous experience with the Web, may therefore need explicit, scaffolded instruction in order to read the Web. This article reports on teacher action research and…

The paper reports on parental involvement in Chinese students' language learning which has emerged as a major finding from an interpretative enquiry into their English-learning experiences. The data confirm that Chinese parents and other family members are closely involved in the study participants' language learning, in particular, their…

This article reports on a study which investigated the language lives of Afrikaans-speaking South African immigrants in New Zealand. Particularly, it focuses on their awareness of and attitudes to language policy in both South Africa and New Zealand, and how these influence their own and their family's language practices. Narrative interviews with…

Most practitioners teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) will agree that students come with some expectations about course content and teaching methodology and that these expectations play a vital role in student motivation and learning. However, the study of student expectations has been a surprising omission from Second…