This ethnographic case study of a male Hmong refugee, Vue Lang, is situated against a backdrop that is characterized by a burgeoning immigrant population in the United States and a growing need to provide them with English language instruction. The Bourdieusian concepts of "capital", "habitus", and "field" (Bourdieu, 1991) are used to explicate…

This article presents a case study of a student involved in language learning at a work placement, as part of the basic Swedish language programme for adult immigrants, Svenska for invandrare (Sfi), in Gothenburg, Sweden. In accordance with the predominant economic agenda, this system is assumed to accelerate labour market entrance as well as…

This article reports on the results of a 5-month intervention in one high school class of English language learners (ELLs) with limited or interrupted formal education using an instructional model developed by the authors. These students are a challenging group for educators, especially at the high school level because they must master content…

This article describes the creation of an intercultural welcoming panel that the authors developed with English as a second language (ESL) students and communication studies (CS) students at a community college. The creation of the welcoming panel is based on their collaborative work with both sets of students over several academic quarters. The…

The purpose of this article is to respond to a review of the report "Developing Literacy in Second-language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth," written by our respected colleague Kathy Escamilla, which appeared in a recent edition of the "Journal of Literacy Research." This will also give us…

This paper explores the experience of English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers moving from teaching older learners to teaching younger learners. The context of the study is the Turkish private primary school sector. In response to a 1997 educational reform, many schools in this sector introduced English as a subject in the first year of…

The notion that language is not simply a politically neutral medium of communication, but a social practice that determines power relations and shapes subjectivity has become widely accepted in critical language and literacy studies. Within any socio-linguistic community, certain ways of using language are considered "proper,"…

Research examined the effects of additional input, audio recordings and video recordings, on second-language readers' comprehension of a short story. Participants were 37 English-language learners enrolled in three college ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes. Each group read Shirley Jackson's short story, "The Lottery," and…

In the present study, Vygotsky's (1978, 1986) sociocultural framework of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and scaffolding writing (Bodrova & Leong, 1995, 1996; Ross, 1976) are used as the theoretical basis to study the development of second language writing. A course project is presented in which advanced English language learners of Spanish…

Higher education institutions across Europe are currently involved in a major process of reforming and restructuring as part of the Bologna process which stresses the role of competences and outcomes in curriculum design. This paper reports on the findings of a research project whose purpose was to assess the clarity and the appropriate…

Educational constructivism has long been associated with advanced pedagogy on the basis that, it champions a learner-centered approach to teaching, advocates learning in meaningful contexts and promotes problem-based activities where learners construct their knowledge through interaction with their peers. Involving language learners in video…

Teachers of adult learners of English as a second language (ESL) have increasingly encountered students with limited literacy skills in their native language and/or in English. Yet, many of these practitioners are not adequately equipped to meet the challenge of teaching reading, especially beginning reading skills. Although there is a paucity of…

Kiswahili is the medium of instruction in Tanzania for 7 years of primary education and thereafter, English takes over at secondary and tertiary levels. However, there has been a debate about the efficacy of English in Tanzania's education system with some researchers recommending a switch to Kiswahili as a way to ameliorate the situation. By…

Within the context of on-going research, this paper explores the pedagogical implications of contrastive analyses of multiword units in English and Spanish based on electronic corpora as a CALL resource. The main tenets of collocations from a contrastive perspective--and the points of contact and departure between both languages--are discussed…

E-rater[R] is an automated essay scoring system that uses natural language processing techniques to extract features from essays and to model statistically human holistic ratings. Educational Testing Service has investigated the use of e-rater, in conjunction with human ratings, to score one of the two writing tasks on the TOEFL-iBT[R] writing…