The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the extent to which a proposed home language survey in California could better identify possible English learner and multilingual students than the current home language survey. The responses to a proposed and current survey were examined for students registering for kindergarten through grade…

The under-preparation in math at the high school and college levels, as well as the low participation of ethnically and linguistically diverse individuals in STEM fields are concerning because their preparation for work in these areas is essential for the U.S. to remain competitive in the innovative knowledge economy. While there is now a…

Thai massage therapists with visual impairment see the need to improve their English in order to be competent in a wider market as Thailand is officially joining the AEC in 2015. However, their access to learning resources is still very limited. The objectives of this research were therefore (1) to develop an audio book which would enable learners…

Blended design of teaching/learning foreign languages, in this case English grammar, has become widely spread within the higher education. The main objective of the article is to discover whether blended approach enhances the process of acquiring new knowledge in the field. The research was conducted at two institutions: faculty of informatics and…

French immersion programs in Saskatchewan have traditionally served to further the goals of additive bilingualism between Canada's two official languages, French and English. Whereas these programs have historically consisted of predominantly Anglophone populations, recent trends in immigration have contributed to the increasingly diverse…

Models of monolingual literacy propose that reading acquisition builds upon children's semantic, phonological, and orthographic knowledge. The relationships between these components vary cross-linguistically, yet it is generally unknown how these differences impact bilingual children's literacy. A comparison between Spanish-English bilingual and…

Literacy is increasingly essential for Americans' health, economic well-being, civic engagement, access to higher education, and social participation. Rapid growth in technology and globalization have increased demand for both universal literacy and higher levels of literacy than in the recent past. Yet national and international assessments…

We describe research results and lessons learned from a laboratory/ classroom collaboration with a school system offering both traditional English-only education and a dual-language track (Spanish/English). Through this collaboration, we addressed basic research questions informing malleable factors that impact cognitive development. In a…

The population of Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the United States continues to increase and there is a significant need to develop psychometrically sound early language and literacy screening measures to accurately capture children's ability in Spanish. In this paper, we describe the innovative design and calibration process of the new…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that trigger language anxiety among Saudi learners in English as Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. The factor of anxiety is especially found among learners while developing proficiency in over all communication and speaking skills as felt by the EFL teachers. The study also seeks to answer…

The study aims to explore in-service teachers' epistemological beliefs about the following five critical paradigms in second language education and their corresponding practices: (1) inductive/deductive grammar instruction, (2) intensive/extensive reading, (3) looking up unknown words in the dictionary/guessing from context, (4) focusing on…

The first aim of this study was to develop a computer adaptive EFL test (CALT) that assesses test takers' listening and reading proficiency in English with dichotomous items and polytomous testlets. We reported in detail on the development of the CALT, including item banking, determination of suitable item response theory (IRT) models for item…

Many research studies into Extensive reading (ER) have recognized its potential for improving language learners' reading proficiency and other language skills. However, some recent reviews of ER research (e.g., Waring & McLean 2015; Nakanishi, 2015; Mori, 2015) have argued for more refinement in research design so that ER research can be more…

Over the last decade, issues regarding attributions for success and failure in the learning of English have garnered much interest among Asian researchers. Of particular interest is the tendency of Asian learners to be self-critical when it comes to attributions for failure in the learning of English. This tendency has commonly been linked to the…

This study investigates the perceptions of stakeholders on the impact of a high-stakes assessment of English language teachers' proficiency--the minimum language standards Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers (English) [LPATE], which was introduced in 2000. Given that the test has now been in place for 17 years, the study investigates the…