Considering the collectivist culture and strong family connections in Latinx families, engaging parents and family members of new Latinx students in higher education is important to promote students' persistence and completion of their degrees. Parent and family member orientation (PFMO) programs offered in Spanish provide a bridge between…

This paper explores the attitudes of undergraduate language learners and their lecturers towards the introduction of an attendance policy in an Irish Higher Education Institution. It also analyses the relationship between the introduction of this policy and student performance (average grade) and progression (pass rates). The policy was introduced…

Bilingual practices in university science courses are on the rise because of the internationalization of higher education. However, little is known about bilingual science teaching practices (BTP) of professors and their beliefs about this type of practice. In this exploratory study, a questionnaire was designed, adapted and applied to explore the…

Portuguese is the fifth most-spoken language in the world, with about 260 million speakers (and growing to an expected 400 million by 2050), the third most spoken in the West, the most widely spoken in the Southern Hemisphere, an official language in 9 countries and other regions. It is present in Europe, South America, Africa, and parts of Asia.…

The result of continuous advancements in technology is a constant questioning of proper methods for the academic teaching of foreign languages in k-12 and higher education. Using Culturally Relevant Andragogy (Parker, 2019) as a framework, this study sought to understand students' attitudes toward project-based learning in an intermediate Spanish…

The rise in Spanish heritage language and Spanish native speaker (SHL/SNS) learners in language programs traditionally designed for second language (L2) learners has prompted an interest in the development of a more inclusive placement exam for diverse learners. Some practitioners opt for an instrument that compiles a comprehensive profile of the…

For young Spanish-English dual language learners (SE-DLLs), early literacy skills, including phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge in Spanish as well as English, are crucial to their reading success. However, there is a lack of research about how SE-DLLs develop early literacy skills, and how their rates of performance can inform…

This dissertation presents a new framework for the application of Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory (SCT) in the second language (L2) classroom called Collaborative-Dynamic Assessment (C-DA). C-DA is a melding of Collaborative Learning (CL), Dynamic Assessment (DA), and Group Evaluation (GE) in all aspects of L2 instruction and assessment. A study…

Child language acquisition research has provided ample evidence of lexical frequency effects. This corpus-based analysis introduces a novel frequency measure shown to significantly constrain adult language variation, but heretofore unexplored in child language acquisition research. Among adults, frequent occurrence of a form in a particular…

The Individual With Disabilities Education Act mandates that parents should be active participants in the Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting. This qualitative study looked at the IEP process from a critical lens that focused on diverse participants' experiences at their child's IEP meeting. What distinguishes counterstories from a…

The increasing prevalence of students' use of Google Translate has been the catalyst for re-developing the language classroom. Through progressive adaptations, Google Translate has been integrated to help support meaningful language learning, academic rigor and intellectual curiosity. Five key steps form the foundation of the ADAPT approach:…

The construct of psychological flow bridges several areas of second language learning interest, including motivation, investment, self-efficacy, and autonomy. Flow, characterized by intense focus on an enjoyable activity that is at once challenging and accessible, creates conditions that have been linked to learning. Research interest in flow has…

This study investigated the relations between bilingual students' amount of talk during classroom discussion, motivation, and self-reported bi-literacy skills (i.e. reading, writing skills in their native and school languages). Sixth-grade Spanish-English bilinguals in the United States (N = 121; M age = 12.119 years old; SD = 0.358) reported on…

Research has investigated how lexical-semantic and participant factors impact word learning in young children and adults. However, limited information pertaining to expressive vocabulary development exists for school-aged bilinguals--particularly those with developmental language disorder (DLD). Cross-linguistic differences in the semantic…

While a wealth of research shows the social and academic benefits of bilingualism and multilingualism, the education of bi/multilingual learners often focuses on transitioning students to English. Based on this fact, the first aim of this article is to highlight translanguaging as a model that challenges monoglossic language ideologies. The second…