Due to the increasing demand on the incorporation of web-based materials into Egyptian higher educational institutions, this study examined students' learning styles, satisfaction with online learning, and the relationships between these two variables and students' gender. The study was conducted on 51 EFL college students (24 males and 27…

A promising source of insights into heritage language learning comes from the broader study of the role of input in language acquisition. We concentrate here on the possibility that qualitative differences in the proficiency of heritage and monolingual language learners can be traced to a qualitative difference in the input available to each…

One of the outcomes of the policy emphasis upon skills formation in countries like Australia and the UK has been an increase in cross-disciplinary structured programs for higher research degrees raising implicit, but often unexamined, questions about the curriculum and expertise that should inform them. Key insights from applied linguistics and…

Four years ago, teachers at International High School in Austin, TX, thought they were doing a great job. Visitors to the school for new immigrants often praised the faculty for working with such a diverse population of students, some of whom had no prior formal education. Aida Walqui's observation was different. The director of WestEd's Quality…

This study used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999, to (a) estimate mathematics achievement trends through 5th grade in the population of students who are English-language proficient by the end of kindergarten, (b) compare trends across primary language groups within this English-language proficient…

This study examined the relations of age, preschool experience, and gender with children's school readiness levels at kindergarten entry. The sample included 5,512 children of predominantly Hispanic heritage and from families experiencing low socioeconomic circumstances. A series of between-subjects ANOVAs indicated that age…

There have been moves in a number of countries in recent years to develop appropriate pedagogies for the teaching of community/heritage languages, distinct from foreign language and mother tongue models. At the same time there has been a growing interest in ways of developing learners' creative abilities and there are grounds for believing that an…

With the United States' adoption of a standards-based approach to education, most attention has focused on the large-scale, high-stakes assessments intended to measure students' mastery of standards for accountability purposes. Less attention has been paid to the role of standards-based assessments in the classroom. The purpose of this paper is to…

This paper describes a subset of results from a large-scale two-year independent evaluation study conducted with the "Scientists in School" (SiS) outreach program and two large school boards in Ontario, Canada. Specifically, it explores the responses of elementary students (n= 811) from typically underrepresented groups in science…

This article describes one researcher's journey as an experimental psycholinguist through changes in practice and policy in the education of English language learners in the United States from the 1970s to the present day. The development of key debates on issues such as bilingualism, language of instruction, and the inclusion of English language…

The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of explicit interventional treatment on developing pragmatic awareness and production of spoken requests in an EAP context (taken here to mean those studying/using English for academic purposes in the UK) with Chinese learners of English at a British higher education institution. The study employed…

This article discusses the language and identity challenges I faced as a critical border ethnographer from Spain doing fieldwork in Southern California. I focus on the multiple positionings that I negotiated doing fieldwork in La Clase Magica (The Magic Class), a computer-based, after-school bilingual program for Mexican/Mexican American/Chicano-a…

The COLT (Community and Lesser Taught Languages) project is a consortium of five UK universities, working with various other regional organisations to set up replicable projects and structures to promote languages in North West England. It received funding under the UK's national "Routes into Languages" initiative. One objective was to…

Drawing together the work of two researchers engaged in ongoing, longitudinal research with practitioners in early years and bilingual complementary settings, this article argues that bilingual learners in the early years need and are entitled to particular kinds of "safe spaces" to succeed in their education. Historical and policy contexts, and…

Discontinuities are often found between top-down language education policies and local language policy enactments, as de facto language policymaking results from stakeholders' negotiation and interpretation of policy mandates. Teachers occupy a particular role in the execution of language education policies, as they are the "final…