Pinyin is a sound-annotating system for Chinese characters using Roman letters. Teaching and learning Pinyin has been an important educational practice in Mainland China for native Chinese children, and it is also typically taught to beginning learners of Chinese as a foreign/second language in tertiary-level classrooms. However, whether it should…

Reading engagement is like a puzzle consisting of many pieces to emplace for successful engagement to occur. The author, a French Immersion teacher/researcher, found that many of her grade one reluctant readers--those students who could read but chose not to--approached reading with some pieces of the puzzle. They had strategies and knowledge but…

The present mixed-methods study examined the role of learner appraisals of speech tasks in second language (L2) French fluency. Forty adult learners in a Canadian immersion program participated in the study that compared four sources of data: (1) objectively measured utterance fluency in participants' performances of three narrative tasks…

This dissertation covers the purpose, findings, and implication of a 10-week ethnographic research study in a dual language immersion (DLI) third-grade classroom in the northeastern U.S. The purpose was to promote a better understanding of the processes and products of identity development in a DLI setting. Sense of belonging and language…

It is well established that part of native speaker competence resides in knowledge of conventionalized word combinations, or nativelike selections (NLSs). This article reports an investigation into the receptive NLS knowledge of second language (L2) users of English in both the United Kingdom and Poland and the influence of a variety of…

The Doss Elementary Mandarin FLI Program parents participated in an in-depth survey of their experiences as parents and their perceptions of their child's experiences in the Mandarin language immersion program in grades kindergarten through 2.

This article presents a case study that examined leaders' actions within a Spanish/English two-way immersion program as they guided teachers in a critical analysis of a common literacy assessment routine. The intent of this research was to move toward a more equitable reconceptualization of the literacy assessment routine and ultimately work to…

The critical importance of second language (L2) input, output, and interaction in TESOL notwithstanding, the decision between immersive (L2-English only) versus nonimmersive approaches is considered "the most fundamental question facing second language acquisition (SLA) researchers, language teachers, and policymakers" (Macaro, 2014, p.…

Working memory (WM) is a recognised component of executive function and has undergone scrutiny in terms of bilingual and monolingual performance comparisons. Research to date, however, has not consistently replicated the presence of bilingual advantage. The present study examined short-term (STM) and WM in immersion-educated children and a matched…

Prior research has shown that EL classification is consequential for students, however, less is known about how EL classification impacts students' outcomes. In this study, we examine one hypothesized mechanism: teacher perceptions. Using nationally-representative data (ECLS-K:2011), we use coarsened exact matching to estimate the effect of EL…

The purpose of this review is to provide a comparison of reading outcomes of the two most popular bilingual programs in the United States: Transitional Bilingual Education and Two-way Bilingual programs. To provide context, we present a theoretical framework and a brief historical perspective on how these programs came to gain popularity. We…

This mixed methods study extends findings from a prior study exploring use of increasingly-complex, expository text situated within a five-week interdisciplinary intervention in which first-grade children attending a Sheltered-English (SEI) immersion classroom advanced their conceptual knowledge and academic language approximating levels near or…

The aim of this paper is to reflect on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings that provide the basis for an understanding of Content-Based Instruction/Content and Language Integrated Learning (CBI/CLIL) in the field and its relevance in education in the twenty-first century. It is argued that the agenda of CBI/CLIL needs to move towards…

Responding to the needs of and/or including students with different need profiles has been an area of focus within Canadian French Second Language (FSL) education for many years. This study draws on quantitative data from two questionnaires (administered before and after Canadian teacher candidates in FSL education completed their practica) and on…

This study examined seven Louisiana kindergarten immersion teachers' practices to evaluate students' oral target language production and compare the oral production elicited when different instructional practices were used over a single semester. Three rounds of three 20-minute observations in three different contexts--circle time, direct…