This study analyzed the required inclusion of school test scores in the yearly evaluation of school principals within the current school reform and standards and accountability movements of both the federal and state departments of education. Extant data from a single school district in Oregon was used for this study, and included: (a)…

This study deals with a special methodology to meet the special needs of Turkish gifted and talented students (GTS) in terms of improving their English oral proficiency. Most GTS are known to have been born also "gifted in languages". Their language awareness shows by their "communicative skills, creative flair and arguing and…

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) currently offers three bilingual programs and two English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for English language learners (ELLs). These programs are intended to facilitate ELLs' integration into the regular school curriculum and to ensure access to equal educational opportunities. This evaluation…

Technology has become an integral part of our everyday lives. As today's teachers prepare to instruct a new generation of students, the question is no longer whether technology should be integrated into the classroom, but "how?" "The Handbook of Research on Integrating Technology Into Contemporary Language Learning and…

Healthcare professionals need good communication skills to be able to communicate with patients. In such provider-patient communication, the professional needs to be well understood by the patient, but also be able to understand subtle parts of a medical history taking dialogue with worried, sick or mentally affected patients. Virtual Patients…

The aim of this study was to investigate the contexts and practices of three undergraduate foreign language teacher education programs identified by ACTFL/Language Testing International and reported by Glisan, Swender, and Surface (2013) as having a high success rate in propelling their graduates into the Advanced proficiency level on the ACTFL…

Cross-cultural communicative ability is an important ability that college students should have in modern society. A successful cross-cultural communication is based on several factors. The basic one is the understanding of the target language culture. In order to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings it is necessary for college students to know…

This study investigated the strategies which first-year Saudi university EFL students used to derive the meaning of unfamiliar words while reading English texts. Using cluster sampling method, participants chosen to be included in the study consisted of six male and six female classes (120 male and 120 female students) of the preparatory year…

Self-regulated learning strategies have recently received a remarkable attention by researchers. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between self-regulated learning strategies and students' language proficiency as well as their reading comprehension. To do so, 115 Iranian EFL university students were selected. First, a TOEFL test…

Malaysia has evolved from a production-based to knowledge-based economy in order to stay relevant and compete in the global marketplace. Thus, the purpose of this article is to discuss current trends in Malaysian higher education and how these affect education policies and practices. Four main trends are discussed in this study: Globalization,…

For nonnative English speakers, taking a standardized English proficiency test seems inevitable, because the scores achieved play an important role in such life events as admission to a school, gaining a scholarship, or securing a job. Considering their importance, it is imperative that such tests be not only valid and reliable, but also fair.…

This multiple case study examines patterns in the oral second language use of three Spanish-speaking English language learners in rehearsed presentations produced annually over 4 years (Grades 9-12) in a U.S. high school. Analysis focuses on students' changing use of transitional devices called frame markers (Hyland, 2005) as a lens for…

This article describes a series of inquiry-based lessons that provide English language learners (ELLs) with opportunities to experience science and engineering practices with conceptual understanding as well as to develop their language proficiency in elementary classrooms. The four-lesson sequence models how various types of instructional…

The purpose of this study was two-fold: first, it aimed at examining the impact of expository text topics on the listening comprehension of L2 learners; second, it aimed to investigate the impact of macro, micro, and macro-micro discourse markers on the listening comprehension of expository texts by L2 learners. The participants (N =105) were male…

Schools are under increasing pressure to reclassify their English learner (EL) students to "fluent English proficient" status as quickly as possible. This article examines timing to reclassification among Latino ELs in four distinct linguistic instructional environments: English immersion, transitional bilingual, maintenance bilingual,…