Recent research has highlighted the role of functional relationships in introducing elementary school students to algebraic thinking. This functional approach is here considered to study essential components of algebraic thinking such as generalization and its representation, as well as the strategies used by students and their connection with…

Research is scarce about the lexical processes undertaken by thousands of L2 learners worldwide who already command one or more languages. Some aspects involved in lexical organisation and production, such as clustering and switching, have been traditionally approached through manual methods, which depend on subjective judgments of semantic…

The current era of globalization and emergence of English as an international language (EIL) has brought about new opportunities for L2 pragmatic learning and teaching. The common view of pragmatic learning as an approximation to native-likeness is changing towards conceiving pragmatic ability as a tool to interact with people of different…

The benefits of task-based interaction in Second Language Learning (SLL) have been made increasingly evident in the literature. However, unlike adult studies, only recently has interaction research on EFL children grown in popularity. Most children-based research has focused primarily on Negotiation of Meaning, while other age-related aspects,…

Research on task repetition in second language (L2) learning has shown the benefits of this practice for subsequent L2 learning. However, as with much L2 research, most studies on task repetition have focused on adults and there is a dearth of research in this area involving young children. This study examines the effect of task repetition on two…

Psychology undergraduates can benefit from direct experiences with laboratory procedures of psychological phenomena. However, they are not always available for students within a distance education program. The present study included students from the Spanish National Distance Education University (UNED) that were to take part in a Basic Psychology…

This is an empirical study in which we explore child foreign language learners' interactional strategy use, uptake, and lexical acquisition in synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC). The study was carried out with 16 10-year-old Spanish English as a foreign language learners paired with age- and proficiency-matched English native…

Online courses have benefited from the adequate use of digital resources that allow learners to be the center of their own learning process. More often online instructors not only aim at what students have to individually do but learners are also engaged in interacting with the educational community by means of a variety of metacognitive…

We conducted a qualitative research of case studies based on think-aloud protocols. The aim was to carry out in-depth analyse secondary students' cognitive difficulties appearing in early stages of transfer processes in problem-solving. The task was to relate several source problems to a target problem, in order to solve it effectively. Source and…

This study examines the effects of foreign language learning context (three-month study-abroad; versus "at-home" instruction) and age (10-11-year-old children versus university students) on the development of effective foreign language communication strategies (CS) in monologue production. Participants (N = 95) were all Spanish/Catalan…

The teaching and learning of mathematics cannot be understood without considering the resolution of word problems. These kinds of problems not only connect mathematical concepts with language (and therefore with reality) but also promote the learning related to other scientific areas. In primary school, problems are solved by using basic…

Musical scores are some of the most important learning tools for musicians' acquisition of musical knowledge. However, despite their educational relevance, very little is known about how music students "conceive" of these cultural external representations. Given that these conceptions might act as mediators of students' learning…

The aim of the study was to examine reading and writing tasks as learning tools in higher education in Spain. The participants were 171 undergraduates from three different university degree courses. The data were gathered through a questionnaire that explored the kind of tasks carried out by the students, their perception of different aspects of…