Growing concerns have been voiced about strategies employed in L2 reading in general and dealing with unknown words in particular. Among other strategies, lexical inferencing has received attention in the literature. However, more research is needed to further clarify how different levels of L2 reading proficiency may affect the readers'…

This project investigates whether learners of Russian perceive the sociocultural weight of the two personal pronouns for "you", "ty" (informal/intimate) and "vy" (formal/polite) when they listen to native speech. Research on address pronoun use shows it to be an important sociocultural variable and, while there is some general consistency in use,…

Vocabulary acquisition and assessment are regarded as the key basis for the instruction of English as a second language. However, it is time-consuming, fallible and repetitive for the school teachers and parents to assess the proficiency of the students' vocabulary acquisition. We customized the open source course management system Moodle to build…

This study explores asynchronous online discussions as a learning strategy for Japanese EFL students from various perspectives. A text analysis of learner posts and replies was performed to determine the quantity, quality, and accuracy of the written language produced. Student participation rates during all four online exchanges were measured to…

Language diversity in South Africa continues to problematise educational provision and the realisation of equitable educational opportunities for all learners in various ways. This article presents the findings of ongoing research which explores the effect of language in education policy on the L1 and L2 proficiency of Grade 7 learners in township…

This paper addresses the ideal of "citizenship" in the US and how particular meanings of history, culture, and language are encoded in government policy and practice. The US government (Citizenship and Immigration Services) presents citizenship as a commitment to shared knowledge and values, and it requires applicants to possess…

TESOL theory is intended to inform teacher practice, but studying what teachers actually do in a given teaching context can sometimes lead to better theory. This report illustrates an area in which practice informed theory in the context of 1-on-1 writing conferences for prematriculated ESL writers. This report describes the creation and…

Speaking self-perceived communication competence (SPCC) is a construct with many potential implications for foreign language learning, but one that has been little studied. SPCC itself is a major predictive factor in willingness to communicate, a construct which has been widely conceptualised and researched. This study (N = 103) used a repeated…

Purpose: This study examined the development and validation of a criterion-referenced Spanish-English Language Proficiency Scale (SELPS) that was designed to assess the oral language skills of sequential bilingual children ages 4-8. This article reports results for the English proficiency portion of the scale. Method: The SELPS assesses syntactic…

Many variables reasonably influence teachers' education. One of these considering variables is being aware of the students' learning styles. Dörnyei (2005) maintains that individual differences correlate strongly with L2 achievements. Keefe (1979) believes that learning styles might be thought of as cognitive, affective, and physiological traits…

This study was designed to examine the pre- and in-service nursing professionals' perceptions of using computers to facilitate foreign language learning as consideration for future English for nursing purposes instruction. One hundred and ninety seven Taiwanese nursing students participated in the study. Findings revealed that (1) the participants…

In this paper, we examine some of the tenets of the current conceptualisations of communicative competence. Drawing on the empirical data collected in linguistically diverse university classrooms, we show that meaning-making in social interaction is considerably more complex and fluid than is envisaged in theoretical models of communicative…

Expanding upon Yosso's theory of "community cultural wealth," this interview-based qualitative study finds that Mexican youth in an urban two-year English immersion high school here referred to as Literacy High are assisted academically by what Yosso would call their "aspirational capital" and what the present article theorizes…

This study examined the construct validity of the TOEFL iBT Speaking subsection for the purposes of international teaching assistant (ITA) certification, a purpose for which it was not specifically designed. The factor structure of the new TOEFL was compared with that of another language performance test in use at a major American research…

Immigrant students may use and develop language and literacy skills differently depending on the dominance of the first and second language (L1 and L2) in the neighborhoods where they live. In this study, neighborhood effects on students' reported language use at home and with peers, and on measured language and literacy proficiency, were…