For over four decades, the federal Head Start program has provided millions of young children from impoverished backgrounds with access to early childhood education and basic health services. By some important measures, Head Start has helped put children on the path to academic and economic success. Teachers in the Head Start program play a…

Since Sinclair (1991) concretized the possibilities of processing and analyzing large quantities of text data through corpus linguistic techniques, the applications of corpus linguistic approaches employing authentic language data and empirical evidence have been widely accepted in language teaching and research. As the applications of corpus…

A number of universities offer fully web-based language courses. Many others are considering this option. Yet it remains unclear whether web-based courses can be as comprehensively effective as classroom-based courses. And, if so, what might an effective web-based language course look like? This dissertation considers the German Online at PSU…

Latina/o critical race theory (LatCrit) is used as an overarching framework that examines the intersectionality of race, class, and gender while also acknowledging the unique forms of subordination within the Latina/o community based on immigration status, language, phenotype, and ethnicity. LatCrit allows for the specific examination of race and…

"Title III Accountability and District Improvement Efforts: A Closer Look" (2010) summarizes findings from interviews with six Title III Directors and nine Title III district-level directors in the spring of 2009. States and districts were selected in order to collect information from some entities with a long history of serving English…

"Title III Policy: State of the States" (2010) discusses state implementation of the Title III accountability requirements based on phone interviews with six state Title III Directors in the spring of 2009, interviews with six experts and university-based researchers who work on education for English Learners, and based on earlier data…

Being able to use other languages is an essential tool for the modern world. While the image of the world as "a global village" is indeed popular, it does not always correspond to reality. A village would tend to be relatively homogeneous in terms of culture and language. Surely, this monocultural, monolingual picture does not reflect the…

With the widespread availability of Internet and computer technology, on-line web-based learning has become prevalent in the field of teaching Chinese as a second/foreign language (CSL/CFL). This study examined the concepts of usability and types of design elements that help construct an effective web-based learning environment, as well as their…

Self-testing is a means to check learning effect. Besides time-space restriction, there are many deficiencies in traditional offline self-testing. With the development of information technology, learners can have self-testing on the Internet. Self-testing on Internet, namely, web-based self-testing, overcomes time-space limitation of traditional…

Learning a second language is very difficult, especially, for the disabled; the disability may be a barrier to learn and to utilize information written in text form. We present the SignMT, Thai sign to Thai machine translation system, which is able to translate from Thai sign language into Thai text. In the translation process, SignMT takes into…

In an effort to reverse the reading crisis purported to plague public education, schools and districts are mandating prescriptive reading programs and teacher-centered instructional practices in hopes of improving the academic achievement of minority students, including English learners (ELs). The wide-spread implementation of these programs in…

This article describes the significance of academic enrichment and English as a second language in a community-based professional development middle school. As an example of a university-school partnership that is responding to the needs of its students, parents, and community, the Baylor University School of Education has partnered with the Cesar…

A number of scholars have questioned the practice of assessing academic writing in the context of a one-off language test, claiming that the time restrictions imposed in the test environment, when compared to the writing conditions typical at university, may prevent learners from displaying the kinds of writing skills required in academic…

This article presents the state education finance and governance profile of Tennessee. The 17th largest state, Tennessee is home to 2.01% of the nation's inhabitants. Funding of K-12 education in Tennessee is accomplished via a formula known as the Basic Educational Program (BEP). This plan primarily utilizes school district enrollment numbers to…

This article presents a study of the Collaboration Centers Project (CCP), which is a pseudonym for a three-year, federally-funded program that focused on helping in-service teachers better address the needs of English language learners (ELLs) in their classrooms. The CCP is important to study because of its clear intention to integrate real…