This article presents a detailed case study analysis of oral and written language expressed by Jacqueline Meyer, a teacher of elementary English Language Learners (ELL),as she struggled to navigate the current political terrain with her students. Ms. Meyer's district adopted commercial materials and increased the amount and substance of testing…

This pilot study investigated the effects of a 20-week quasiexperimental vocabulary intervention aimed at improving Spanish-speaking language minority students' English vocabulary and writing outcomes. Participants were two matched samples of fifth graders (N = 49) in a predominantly Latino, low-income urban school. Pre- and posttest analyses…

This article describes the results of a six-month ethnographic case study of a French immigrant of Senegalese descent and how he recreates the culture of an American company's speech community. Data were collected through interviews, field notes, and shadowing the participant at his place of employment. The transcribed interviews and field notes…

We examined ethnicity and cultural orientation as predictors of parents' views of and involvement in children's education, using data gathered from the Latino (n = 74) and non-Latino (17 White and 13 ethnic minority) parents of children in an elementary school's dual-language program. Parents completed a questionnaire that assessed Latino and…

The present study is an examination of the contribution of bilingualism to trilingualism, namely the influence of learning two different orthographies on learning a third. The participants were two groups of sixth graders from Israeli schools who were studying English as a foreign (second or third) language: Russian Israeli children for whom…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the efficiency, precision, and validity of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) could be improved by assessing confidence differences in knowledge that examinees possessed. We proposed a novel polytomous CAT model called the confidence-weighting computerized adaptive testing (CWCAT), which combined a…

This qualitative study grounded in critical inquiry and cultural-ecological theory explores barriers to academic achievement for Latino English language learners (ELLs). Parents and teachers were purposefully selected from a rural school district in the Rocky Mountain region to participate in focus group interviews. Findings included barriers…

Latino youth are more likely than any other ethnic group to drop out of high school in the United States. Though some research has helped us understand the factors leading to dropout, very few studies have assessed Latino student's opinions of services and factors that would help them stay in school (e.g., family, school, peers, and policies).…

This paper reports on a study designed to investigate (a) whether peer review is an effective pedagogical activity with adult Chinese students in the teaching of second language (L2) academic writing and (b) how factors such as perceptions of the influence of peer reviewers' L2 proficiency, previous experience with peer review, feedback…

This article examines whether there is any difference between the effect of oral and written corrective feedback (CF) on learners' accurate use of English articles. To this end, the current research presents the results of a quasi-experimental study with a pretest, immediate-posttest, delayed-posttest design, using 12 intact intermediate…

This paper deals with the implementation of an "online pedagogical assistant" in a blended learning device for English for Special Purposes (ESP) students in a French university (UPMC, Paris VI). As it is now, it comprises a customized website designed to serve as a guide through the development of the students' work. The architecture of…

This research is an interpretive study of individual and institutional language practices based on an analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from a large higher education institute of teacher training in Britain. The study explores teacher professionalism in relation to language, examining the "invisible" linguistic and cultural…

The evolution of Rwanda's language policies since 1996 has played and continues to play a critical role in social reconstruction following war and genocide. Rwanda's new English language policy aims to drop French and install English as the only language of instruction. The policy-makers frame the change as a major factor in the success of social…

Last year the author had the pleasure of working with a team of dedicated teachers in an alternative high school setting on the implementation of a grant she had written for their program. The grant was the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education (CTE) Act grant, federally distributed to the states. As the grant writer and teacher…

This large mixed methods study investigated the effects of the introductory second language acquisition (SLA) course on the beliefs of pre-service teachers (n = 381) enrolled over a three-year period at a state university in California. Pre- to post-course paired sample t-tests that were run on 23 beliefs statements from a widely used survey…