In many countries, children need to become proficient in both their home language (L1) and an international language, such as English (L2). Governments face tradeoffs in how to prioritize these two objectives. We provide empirical evidence on cross-linguistic transfer between L1 and L2, using the results of two randomized evaluations of Structured…

In this study we evaluated the performance of the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS) in a sample of 189 students in Grades 3 and 6 who attended a middle-tier private school in Karachi, Pakistan, where the medium of instruction was English (L2) and the majority language was Urdu (L1). We took a holistic approach and employed several…

The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of teaching intervention for Chinese learners, who were English speakers who tended to focus on phonemic awareness, in learning Chinese. It also tried to examine the impacts of Chinese phonological and morphological awareness on their English language development. The study was conducted in…

Context: The island of Malta is a former British colony, and to this day, education continues to be accessed bilingually. For mathematics education, Maltese and English are used for verbal interaction, with subject-specific words tending to be retained in English. Written mathematics texts are in English, including textbooks, worksheets, digital…

This cross-sectional study aimed to explore the nature and the patterns of lexical growth in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and non-CLIL learners across three successive academic years. To pursue the purpose of the study a total of 110 female students of six classes in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades in both bilingual and monolingual…

Background: The Progress in International Reading and Literacy 2021 results draw stark attention to an ongoing crisis in primary education in South Africa. Research attempting to understand and address continued underperformance has focused on literacy learning and teaching in schools where the language of learning and teaching (LOLT) is the same…

This article reports on the utilization of group discussion by teachers to improve the comprehension skills of learners in their multilingual classes. The study aimed to examine solutions to low comprehension skills among learners whose language of instruction differed from their home languages. The participants were teachers (n = 12) and learners…

The present study was carried out with 120 Native Tamil speakers to know the effects of age and instructional language on narrative comprehension and inference-making ability. Children from 3rd to 5th grades (8 to 11 years) were divided into Group A (n = 60; Monolinguals) and Group B (n = 60; Bilinguals). Seven questions were framed to assess…

The "optimism hypothesis" claims that immigrant students do better in the Norwegian education system than their socioeconomic status would suggest, due to the strong educational aspirations that immigrant parents might have for their children. Grounded in an educational equity paradigm, this study aims to test this hypothesis by…

Research has established the link between socioeconomic status (SES) and children's reading development. However, the theoretical mechanisms underlying the association between them have yet to be fully understood. Moreover, few previous studies exploring the mechanisms tapped both first language (L1) and second language (L2) at the same time. In…

This study investigated if the difficulty of instructional classroom English in primary teacher-guidebooks of English is adequately manipulated by learner-proficiency. Corpora of classroom English were compiled from 20 guidebooks from five publishers, approved following the 2015 Revised National Curriculum of Korea. Extracted materials from grades…

Language-in-education policies in Africa are believed to be a factor of poor quality education on the continent as languages learners are not conversant with continue to take the lead as languages of teaching and learning. This paper explores the experience of teachers and learners in Rwanda transitioning from Kinyarwanda to English as a medium of…

Immersion models require the concurrent teaching of mathematics and of a second language. Research evidence suggests that few teachers possess sufficient pedagogical knowledge and skill to manage both these tasks adequately. The argument in this position paper is that the construct of 'language-as-resource' offers a more equitable bridging pathway…

Framed by decolonial theory, this paper explores how language and literacy ideologies, including Anglonormativity, or the expectation that children should be proficient in a standardised version of English and are deficient if not, shape language and literacy practices in South African classrooms. While not legitimised, the use of fluid language…

Bakhtinian concepts of persuasive and authoritative discourse, this study reports on science and English language arts instructional practices in a multilingual, rural, fourth-grade classroom in Kenya. Situated in English as a medium of instruction (EMI) and through the use of case study, the study explores classroom discourse data to illustrate…