When the former principal of Viewmont Elementary School arrived there three years earlier, he found a still-new facility, a friendly teaching staff, and a solid, if noninclusive, core of parents eager to be involved. However, a deeper look revealed a school struggling with change, including recent demographic changes. A closer look at the data…

Response to Intervention (RTI) has been heralded by many as the long-awaited alternative to using a discrepancy formula for special education eligibility decisions. RTI focuses on intervening early through a multi-tiered approach where each tier provides interventions of increasing intensity. RTI has the potential to affect change for English…

Differential academic language proficiency is an issue of major educational concern, bearing on problems varying from pupil performance, to social prospects, and citizenship. In this paper we develop a conception of the language-acquiring subject, and we discuss the consequences for understanding differential language proficiency in schools.…

This paper describes the need to reconceptualise teaching and learning programs for intercultural language learning. The shift is from concepts such as "content" and its "coverage" (intended to address "learner needs and interests") to developing programs focused on meaning making in interaction and on learners as…

As interest in the study of foreign languages grows, more and more school and district leaders will be charged with the responsibility of establishing a language program. Some of the questions that they will need to answer include: What language and what model should be selected? How could another program be inserted in a school day already…

With the increasing importance of the People's Republic of China in the world, more and more people are learning to speak Mandarin. This article reports the views of some teachers and learners in the UK today, considers some of the difficulties which they face, and gives some suggestions for progress.

Mobility can affect a learner's participation in different communities that support language learning. In this paper we report on our experience with supporting a course in which language students are encouraged to travel to a country where the target language is spoken. On the one hand, students who travel abroad get in contact with local…

This paper responds to calls for studies that investigate multiple types of word knowledge and the processes of word learning. Focusing on a single word, this three-month diary study describes the micro-development of an adult male's Japanese L2 lexical knowledge. In contrast to most L2 vocabulary acquisition studies, this study posits a dynamic…

It is commonly recognized that, for lecturers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in a university setting, the goal of their teaching is to develop learners' ability to communicate appropriately in this language. This means that teaching practices should pay attention not only to the key features of the linguistic system of English, but also to…

This study investigates the reactions of students in two Hong Kong secondary classrooms to their teachers' feedback, focusing particularly on the factors that might have influenced their reactions. Student data from questionnaires, checklists and protocols were triangulated with teacher data from interviews, classroom observations and feedback…

Existing research indicates that instructed learners' L2 proficiency and their metalinguistic knowledge are moderately correlated. However, the operationalization of the construct of metalinguistic knowledge has varied somewhat across studies. Metalinguistic knowledge has typically been operationalized as learners' ability to correct, describe,…

The focus in many language curricula is shifting from "four skills" to "literacy." In a literacy-oriented curriculum, texts stand at the center of every course at every level. Teachers introduce content through texts early in the language learning process, assist even advanced students with the challenges of reading and writing in German, and help…

The current study was designed to investigate the timing and nature of interaction between the two languages of bilinguals. For this purpose, we compared discrimination of Canadian French and Canadian English coronal stops by simultaneous bilingual, monolingual and advanced early L2 learners of French and English. French /d/ is phonetically…

This study investigated talker-dependent and talker-independent perceptual adaptation to foreign-accent English. Experiment 1 investigated talker-dependent adaptation by comparing native English listeners' recognition accuracy for Chinese-accented English across single and multiple talker presentation conditions. Results showed that the native…

All teachers face challenges in helping English language learners (ELLs) reach proficiency in content areas while learning English. ESL teachers are essential in helping ELLs to face the twin challenges of achieving in content areas and developing academic English proficiency. This article discusses how ESL teachers can continue to help students…