Presents results of an exploratory study on advanced-level French second language (L2) learners' metalinguistic awareness. Specifically, learner performance was examined carrying out three steps of a written and oral grammaticality judgment test. Subjects' ability to identify and correct an error, and to provide the rule, were examined, and…

Assesses the linguistic nature of home community, recollections of early experiences in second language learning, and attitudes and beliefs about language learning and bilingualism in English-speaking Canadian college students who study French. Surveys provide support for a causal model which indicates that sociocultural experiences influence…

This study was originally constructed to examine effect of content-area reading on English-as-a-Second-Language writing proficiency but was restructured and extended because composition topics proved to be confounding factors. Although results of the study raise several issues, most significant are the influence of topic on the acquisition of ESL…

Most education systems prepare their students to function in the national language and at least one additional language. However, only one-third of U.S. elementary schools offer students language-learning opportunities. Multilingual societies have competitive advantages over monolingual societies in international trade. Ameliorative steps are…

Outcomes assessment is a process by which an academic unit defines and articulates its program goals and assesses its attainment of those goals. This article chronicles one language division's efforts at outcomes assessment for beginning and intermediate Spanish. The evidence used for program assessment consisted of WebCAPE placement scores,…

Drawing on the unique opportunities that physical education settings provide, physical education specialists can assist English language learners (ELLs) in developing language by implementing language objectives in their lessons. Language objectives encourage teachers to provide explicit language instruction and language support for students who…

Five experiments are reported in which the picture naming performance of bilingual speakers in a language-switching task was explored. In Experiment 1, Spanish learners of Catalan and Korean learners of Spanish were asked to perform a switching task between their first and dominant language (L1, Spanish or Korean) and their second language (L2,…

Alternative assessment procedures have made consistent inroads into second and foreign language assessment practices over the last decade. The original impetus for alternative assessment methods has been predicated more on the ideological appeal this approach offers than on firm empirical evidence that alternative assessment approaches actually…

The study investigated reading errors made by Ethiopian learners of Hebrew (n=34). These newcomers to Israel, unlike other groups such as the Russian Jews, typically have low literacy skills in their first language (Amharic). Their ability to read Hebrew, as judged on a reading comprehension test, was still poor after living in Israel for seven…

The present study examined factors that influence the process of learning to read in a second language. The Hebrew reading comprehension skills of 68 Russian-speaking children (mean age 7 years 6 months) were screened at the start of Grade 2. From this sample, 40 participants were selected: 20 successful learners and 20 unsuccessful learners.…

Two hundred and four 5- and 6-year-olds who were monolingual English-, bilingual English-Chinese-, or Chinese-speaking children beginning to learn English (2nd-language learners) were compared on phonological awareness and word decoding tasks in English and Chinese. Phonological awareness developed in response to language exposure and instruction…

Based on ethnographic research conducted in five schools in Durban, this article addresses three issues that are widely perceived as major problems in the transformation of education in post-apartheid South Africa: 1) the rapid and unplanned integration of state-funded schools that has led to overcrowding of classrooms, 2) the class and domestic…

This study investigated whether second language (L2) proficiency affects pragmatic comprehension, namely the ability to comprehend implied meaning in spoken dialogues, in terms of accuracy and speed of comprehension. Participants included 46 native English speakers at a U.S. university and 160 Japanese students of English in a college in Japan who…

There is no question that the development of oral language skills in second (as well as first) language learners is of prime importance. Language learners must focus on oral language proficiency because it is eventually the skill they will most use. But oracy in second language learners does not develop in a vacuum. It is inextricably intertwined…

This article reports the findings of part of a major study exploring the disciplinary writing processes and perceptions of 15 Chinese graduate students in sciences and engineering at a major Canadian university. The findings relate to the thinking languages of the participants in writing disciplinary assignments. The study reveals that whether an…