Research Findings: The study examined the relationship between Spanish-speaking DLL children's engagement within the preschool classroom with teachers, peers, and tasks and their school readiness skills compared to monolingual English-speaking peers. Results suggested that DLL children had lower language skills and phonological awareness by the…

Given the changing demographics of young children served by U.S. schools, educational equity practices must include ways of sustaining cultural heritage practices of children from ethno-linguistic, minoritized, and under-resourced communities. In the present study, we partnered with a bilingual Head Start serving mostly children of immigrant…

Interacting with native speakers in various types of virtual exchanges is becoming increasingly accessible for language learners and teachers around the world. The present study examined the experiences of beginning and intermediate level learners of Spanish in the United States as they interacted weekly with native Spanish speakers over the…

This critical classroom study of language oppression draws from the notion of existing inequalities based on power relations in education research, as addressed in a critical ethnography. This critical classroom study explores the cases of two recent immigrant students, "Manuel" and "Malena," on the -U.S.-Mexican border near El…

We examine the second language (L2) acquisition of variable Spanish word order by first language (L1) speakers of English via the acquisition of unaccusative and transitive predicates in various focus-related contexts. We employ two bimodal linguistic tasks: (1) acceptability judgment task (B-AJT) and (2) appropriateness preference task (B-APT).…

A major rationale for study abroad (SA) from the perspective of second language acquisition is the presumed opportunity available to sojourners for naturalistic second language (L2) "immersion". However, such opportunities are affected by variations in the linguistic, institutional and social affordances of SA, in different settings.…

Research on pragmatic awareness of language learners has mainly focused on the target language. As argued by some scholars, a multilingual perspective should also be adopted in the analysis of pragmatic awareness. In fact, existing findings point to the peculiar characteristics of multilingual pragmatic comprehension and awareness. Bearing these…

This study tests the Competing Systems Hypothesis (CSH) as applied to adult second language acquisition of aspect in Spanish. The CSH purports that differences among tutored and untutored learners result from competition between one system of underlying grammatical knowledge and another of learned metalinguistic knowledge in tutored learners…

In this article, I share two critical incidents from the vocabulary lessons in an instructional cycle on immigration with third-grade bilingual students. In sharing these critical incidents, I seek to raise awareness of how colonial legacies of cultural and linguistic domination permeate translanguaging pedagogy. I use critical reflection,…

Developing second/foreign language (L2) comprehension skills can represent a challenging endeavor for learners with autism spectrum condition (ASC) because their social and verbal cognition may be impaired in terms of abstract reasoning, organizing, and retelling events, inferring intentions, and identifying emotions contained in a text. Thus, it…

This paper examines the use of technology in the development and assessment of interpersonal communication skills in an online second language (L2) Spanish classroom. The study explores the use of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools and strategies to promote interaction among learners, while also considering the challenges and…

There are a small number of MSW and BSW programs in the U.S. that have specialized tracks to train social workers to work with Spanish-speaking clients. This qualitative focus group study reports on the experiences of 25 students who participated in a new English-Spanish dual-language component in the final year of an MSW program in a Northeastern…

The premise of the present paper is that an intercultural approach to multilingualism in schools generates inclusion and a construction of cultural and linguistic identity that respects the diversity of society and classrooms. Students, teachers, and families participated in an action research project conducted in four schools with the presence of…

This study presents the case of a multilingual refugee (Maji) of Kirundi, Swahili, French, and English, from Burundi living in the U.S., and examines the language ideologies and identities embedded in his transnational narratives. We analyze our focal participant's multi-layered transnational experiences using Darvin and Norton's (2015) model of…

Purpose: Language sampling is a critical component of language assessments. However, there are many ways to elicit language samples that likely impact the results. The purpose of this study was to examine how different discourse types and elicitation tasks affect various language sampling outcomes. Method: A diverse group of K-3 students (N =…