In 2001, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) released the "Rainbow Plan" as the educational reform plan for the twenty-first century. As part of the plan, MEXT will make English education activities compulsory at Japanese public elementary schools beginning in 2011. The purpose of the Rainbow Plan…

Comprehensive high schools are extremely complex sites for the teaching and learning of academic literacies. However, current policy mandates emphasizing standards and accountability mask this complexity. Legislation such as No Child Left Behind in the United States and similar initiatives in other countries narrow the curriculum through their…

Educators are concerned with providing support in the classroom for all students. This is particularly true with students who are learning English as a second or additional language. In the past 10 years, even teachers in remote and rural areas of the United States have felt the impact of immigration and sought professional development for working…

Three classes of undergraduate Hispanic students assigned to an ESL professor and a teaching assistant were selected to experience cooperative learning over a full semester. Pre-semester surveys were completed by 80 undergraduate students. Post-semester surveys were completed by 66 undergraduate students. Strategies used in the classes included…

Increasing numbers of overseas students are applying to study at universities in Australia. Many students who meet all of the university's academic entry requirements except English language proficiency are offered pathway programs which prepare them for their tertiary studies. To date, much of the research relating to international students…

Research into Singapore English (SgE) has undergone many paradigm shifts from the 1970s to the present. This paper first begins with a consideration of how variation in the English language used in Singapore has been studied. It then identifies the two main varieties of English commonly described in Singapore, namely, Standard SgE (SSE) and…

In recent years, the dual-language program model has become popular in many schools across the nation, and the classes have already been flourishing in countries outside the U.S. for years. Dual-language programs are an excellent way to provide academic instruction for both English-language learners (ELLs) and English-proficient speakers. Since…

The purpose of this study was to explore the teaching practices of an ESL (English as a second language) teacher with regard to middle school English-language learners' participation in classroom activities. Findings suggest that the teacher's approach based on the students' sociocultural needs--more so than their linguistic needs--promoted their…

This qualitative study illuminates the challenge of preparing teacher candidates to engage critically about social justice issues in their planning and instruction in a yearlong teacher education credential program in a northern California university. Using co-narrative to describe the study in tandem with thematic analyses of candidates'…

This paper reports on a study of peer interaction in ten foreign language (FL) classes, six secondary and four primary, over a period of four months. The focus of this paper is the nature of peer interaction, including the purposes of second language use, and language choice. The data, comprising observation, audio and video recordings of five…

The researchers investigated attributions for success, attitudes, and aptitudes for native language learning and foreign language learning success for 648 students enrolled in 100-level university foreign language courses (Spanish, French, and German). We examined relationships via correlational analyses and used structural equation modeling to…

Gardner's (1983) Multiple Intelligences Theory (MIT) has been found to have profound implications in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in that it provides a way for teachers to recognize learners' individual cognitive and affective differences by providing favorable motivational conditions for learning. However, little investigation…

This study addresses the role that active translation may have in second language (L2) vocabulary learning. Some research suggests that translation might be an effective cognitive strategy for L2 vocabulary learning. Participants were 191 native French-speaking students enrolled in a TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) program.The study…

In recent years, synchronous online peer response groups have been increasingly used in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing. This article describes a study of synchronous online interaction among three small peer groups in a Taiwanese undergraduate EFL writing class. An environmental analysis of students' online discourse in two writing…

Two teachers engage in assessment discussions based on an analytical rubric to assess an ELL student's writing. Discourse analysis methods were used to analyze recorded/transcribed assessments and discussions. The teachers focused on descriptors for the rubric's lowest scores, neglecting their own knowledge and experience with English learners. As…