This article aims to show and explain the growing motivational, personal or affective difficulties that unemployed adult learners are currently facing in the English subject when they decide to retake their education in age-diverse Vocational Training Programs in the Spanish educational system. The results presented in this article are based on a…

The main objective of this study is to explore how students who participate in virtual intercultural exchanges use evaluative language to build rapport and encourage collaboration. Data were gathered from 211 email messages sent by 40 Spanish and American university students and were tagged following Martin and White's Appraisal model.…

Parenting is a key factor for the development of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Therefore, early intervention programs should target parenting behaviors to improve children's developmental outcomes. The present study analyzed the effect of parental behaviors and other family factors on the cognitive and linguistic…

This paper presents the results of a study based on the change in language attitudes experienced by some allochthonous individuals through contact with the sociolinguistic situation in Catalonia. Previous studies have suggested that in some cases, contact with Catalan--a minority language with a valued identity--acts as a stimulus for some…

The aim of this article is twofold: to assess the effectiveness of a CLIL (content and language integrated learning) module on affective factors (motivation and self-esteem), and to test the purported blurring effect of CLIL on gender differences in foreign language learning. Forty-six students in their fourth year of compulsory secondary…

Research has shown that teaching second language (L2) learning strategies explicitly promotes an increase in strategy use and in oral proficiency. Consequently, a checklist based on the six types of strategies from Oxford's taxonomy (1990) was created to analyze strategic instruction in the most common textbooks used in the last year of Higher…

Many study abroad programs require language proficiency, emphasize language learning, or otherwise support the development of language skills for their students. A general assumption underlying this attention to foreign language acquisition is that access to the host culture is increased as students are able to converse with host nationals using…

This study investigated the effect of the cultural background of immigrant children on affective variables in learning three different languages. Participants were students in secondary multicultural classrooms in Spain. A total of 114 students, aged 12 to 16, answered a questionnaire based on Gardner's Attitude = Motivation Test Battery assessing…

Highlights the unifying role of metacognition in all levels of learner training. The article argues that one of the premises of any self-directed program should be that of enhancing students' metacognition to prepare them for their own learning autonomy. This paper describes an application of this principle including two examples of its use by…

Suggests an evaluation framework for language teachers' inservice courses regarding the degree to which they offer participants the opportunity to become more open to "otherness." The article describes training courses in five European countries and examines how they typically bring participants into contact with natives of another…