The purpose of this research study is to compare the effectiveness of 2 different instructional approaches to language instruction--integrated (oral plus written) versus oral-only instruction--in developing oral language skills of young students learning English as a second language (ESL). Drawing upon 2 competing research perspectives on young…

This paper describes the development and evaluation of a handwritten correction support system with audio and playback strokes used to teach Japanese writing. The study examined whether audio and playback strokes have a positive effect on students using honorific expressions in Japanese writing. The results showed that error feedback with audio…

This paper investigates authentic writing through the use of wikis by Year 7 ESL learners in a secondary school in Hong Kong. The wikis were used as a collaborative writing platform to produce--with minimal input and support from their teachers--wiki content that describes the different facilities and features of their school. Over a period of two…

The Latino/a population of the United States continues to increase dramatically; consequently, educators face the challenge of how best to provide educational services for those whose primary language is Spanish. The purpose of this study was to examine student discourse between bilingual students in gifted programs and bilingual students in the…

Given the raised graduation requirement of the proficiency Enhancement Program (PEP) to attain proficiency levels of "2+," "2+," and "2," the importance of target language use has been highly emphasized across language schools at Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC). This article discusses some of the challenges associated…

The neo-conservative subjectification of English teachers (as "language technicists" and "preachers of culture") is being resisted in Australia (for example, Doecke, Howie and Sawyer, 2006a). In this climate of contestation, the (re) conceptualisation of English as a critical space promoting social justice cannot be ethical or…

As part of a larger study (Rahimi, 2004), this study investigates the use of language learning strategies by post-secondary level Persian EFL learners. Particular attention is paid to the variables affecting learners' choice of strategies, and the relationship, if any, between these variables and learners' patterns of strategy use. Data were…

This case study investigates the bilingual and trilingual codeswitching patterns of two multilinguals who grew up in a Hungarian-Romanian two-language family in Transylvania, and whose bilingual codeswitching changed into trilingual codeswitching after they moved to North America. An analysis of the speakers' discourse reveals the amounts of…

The study of language attitudes has proved vital in order to guarantee the success of any proposal for language teaching in schools. Nevertheless, in Aragon, a region of Northern Spain close to the Pyrenees, three regional languages coexist. The number of studies on this phenomenon is scarce, and we can only associate this lack of research with…

English has been an official language of Hong Kong since it was first introduced to the region in the 1840s. Since then, its influence has invariably been strong and remains so even after 1997, when the sovereignty of the region was returned to China. This special background of English in Hong Kong heavily influences the policy and practices of…

This article discusses the combination of two professional development strategies--lesson study and the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP)--which gave teachers in Freeport Public Schools, a district on Long Island, New York, new tools for improving instruction for ELLs in mainstream classrooms. The unique combination of the two…

Recent "Focus on Form" studies have emphasized the importance of learner--rather than teacher--generated attention to formal aspects of interlanguage. In this study, we took advantage of EFL learners' analytical grammar knowledge and designed a post-task approach to foster learners' self-initiated attention. Student dyads transcribed their…

Research examined construct meaning and validity for two new measures of receptive and expressive vocabulary for Spanish-speaking kindergarteners learning English. Substantive validity and generalizability of score meaning was assessed by examining correlations between an established measure (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-PPVT) and new measures…

This paper analyzes pedagogic practice in primary and secondary Singaporean English classrooms in terms of dialogicity. The dominant interactional patterns in Singaporean English classrooms are initiation-response-evaluation (IRE), whole class lecture and individual seatwork in which the students give either one word answers or remain silent.…

The Dartmouth conference of 1966 has taken on a legendary stature in the annals of U.S. college composition. In the most familiar accounts (Applebee; Berlin; Harris), Dartmouth provided the stage for a trans-Atlantic encounter of the British growth model and the American curriculum-sequencing model, pitting process and personal growth against the…