Test takers should have a voice in testing practices (Mathew, 2004). However, when incorporating their input, systematic processes to ensure the validity of testing practices must be followed. Such processes allow for test development to be a more democratic process (Shohamy, 2001), without sacrificing the value of the resulting inferences made…

The purpose of this study is to report the history of communication strategy and highlight the importance of strategic competence. It provides the histories and characterizations of communication strategy. Besides, it presents from which perspectives these definitions of communication strategies were developed. Various earlier and latter…

The aim of our study was to examine the relationship between access to the mental lexicon, working memory and knowledge of English (L2) vocabulary. Analyses were undertaken amongst monolingual speakers of Polish (26 with dyslexia, 24 without) who studied English as a second language as part of their compulsory educational programme at school. We…

This study draws from a cultural-historical perspective to explore the experiences of two pre-­service ESL teachers in terms of their efforts to maximize the use of the target language during a school practicum. Both student teachers were fluent in English, had received training in maximizing target language use during their university studies,…

One in five school-age children in the U.S. speaks a language other than English at home (Zeigler & Camarota, 2014). Roughly half of these emerging bilingual students (Garcia, 2009) are classified as English learners (ELs) when they enter school, meaning they do not meet state or district criteria for English proficiency (NCES, 2015). As the…

The present study investigates the possible influence of foreign language learning on individuals' divergent thinking abilities. Unlike the large body of research devoted to unfolding the effect of bilingualism on cognitive functions, foreign language learning has gained little attention. This study aimed at bringing into attention the distinctive…

The study reported in this paper investigated the relationship between components of aptitude and the fluency, lexical variety, syntactic complexity, and accuracy of performance in two types of written and spoken narrative tasks. We also addressed the question of how narrative performance varies in tasks of different cognitive complexity in the…

Background: Little is known about optimal treatment approaches and stuttering treatment outcomes for children with Down syndrome. Aims and method: The purpose of this study was to investigate outcomes for a child with Down syndrome who received a combination of fluency shaping therapy and parent delivered contingencies for normally fluent speech,…

Many teachers of foreign languages struggle with finding alternative ways of exposing their students to the target language. At Kent Gardens Elementary School (KGES) in McLean, Virginia, many students participate in an immersion program from first grade to sixth grade. These students spend half of every school day immersed in French while learning…

This paper proposes a new method for the combined teaching of pronunciation and vocabulary to learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). While there is commonly strong emphasis on the teaching of vocabulary, pronunciation teaching is frequently neglected in the EFL classroom. The proposed method aims to address such imbalance which may…

The advent of Common Core Standards in New York State has forced a revisitation of past practices. With a goal of ensuring that all students are college and career-ready by the end of high school these standards call for increased rigor and higher expectations at all grade levels. The purpose of this study was to analyze through collaborative…

This article is part of a longitudinal study of American college students studying Mandarin in China. Its main data are drawn from monthly speaking events (four sessions with each student) conducted in Chinese with each of 29 participants in a study-abroad program in China. The study yielded these results: (a) Students made significant progress in…

Language learners with high working memory capacity have an advantage, all other factors being equal, during the second language acquisition (SLA) process; therefore, identifying a pedagogical intervention that can compensate for low working memory capacity would be advantageous to language learners and instructors. Extensive research on the…

In this pedagogical reflection, a White mathematics teacher educator describes what she learned from three Latina pre-service teachers who were recent immigrants from Mexico while they completed an elementary mathematics methods course. Using Rochelle Gutierrez's (2012) metaphor of a window and mirror, the author interrogates her own identity and…

This cross-sectional study investigated the bilingual lexical skills of 175 US school-age children (5 to 18 years old) with Cantonese, Mandarin, or Korean as their heritage language (HL), and English as their dominant language. Primary study goals were to identify potential patterns of development in bilingual lexical skills over the elementary to…