This article reports on a questionnaire-based investigation of writing strategies used by Singapore primary school pupils. A sample of 1,618 pupils from two local primary schools participated in the study. A number of one-way ANOVA analyses were run to measure the relationship between the participants' use of writing strategies and their English…

The development of Spoken English in Pakistani teachers training institutions working in public sector has never been assessed. This study explores the extent of improvement in English speaking skills among prospective teachers of one year teacher education program at three public sector universities in Punjab, Pakistan, where English is the…

Pragmatic competence is as an essential aspect of communicative competence. Does environment have an effect on developing pragmatic competence? Do levels of pragmatic competence differ between English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) students? Most studies have shown greater pragmatic awareness among ESL students…

Under Texas Administrative Code (TAC) §89.1225(h), districts are required to use the exit criteria represented in the chart titled "2013-2014 English Proficiency Exit Criteria Chart" found at (http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=4098) to exit English language learners (ELLs) from bilingual/ESL programs. The exit criteria under TAC…

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…

Reading and singing song lyrics utilizing karaoke-style performances provides ESL teachers with an effective English language acquisition teaching tool. Singing the lyrics of popular songs provides ESL students with multiple exposures to essential foundational oral and written English vocabulary and grammatical structures. This practice develops…

The purpose of this qualitative inquiry was to understand how four in-service Spanish teachers interpreted their participation in a summer study abroad program and how the experience contributed to their ongoing professional development and language proficiency. Using a multiple case design (Simons, 2009; Stake, 2005; Yin, 2009), the researchers…

In the present study, aspects of the measurement of writing are disentangled in order to investigate the validity of inferences made on the basis of writing performance and to describe implications for the assessment of writing. To include genre as a facet in the measurement, we obtained writing scores of 12 texts in four different genres for each…

The purpose of this study was to enhance the meaning of the scores of an English-language test by developing performance levels and descriptors for reporting overall test performance. The levels and descriptors were intended to accompany the total scale scores of TOEFL Junior® Standard, an international test of English as a second/foreign…

The impact of globalisation in the last 20 years has led to an overwhelming increase in the use of English as the medium through which many business people get their work done. As a result, the linguistic landscape within which we now operate as researchers and teachers has changed both rapidly and beyond all recognition. In the discussion below,…