Language-in-education research can contribute to transformative progress toward educational equity and excellence. Although this assertion is likely uncontroversial within the field of language in education, agreeing on which types of research lead to which transformative progress is much less straightforward. The thought-provoking commentaries on…

It is sometimes claimed that teaching grammar is elitist. This article contends that in actual fact, far from being elitist, grammar is a vital ingredient in the English language teaching mix. Since the Chomskyan revolution in linguistics there has been a school of thought in the English speaking world that the formal teaching of grammar is…

This commentary critiques Ambridge's radical exemplar model of language acquisition using research from the Longitudinal Study of Early Language, which has tracked the language development of 30+ children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) since 2002. This research has demonstrated that the children's capacity for abstraction at the grammatical…

Short term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) performance consistently predict language abilities in children with developmental language disorders. However, causality is not fully established. Moreover, evidence from the fine-grained analysis of STM/WM tasks and comprehension of complex sentences, suggests that long term memory (LTM)…

Purpose: This commentary responds to the implications for child language intervention of Catts and Kamhi's (2017) call to move from viewing reading comprehension as a single ability to recognizing it as a complex constellation of reader, text, and activity. Method: Reading comprehension, as Catts and Kamhi explain, is very complicated. In this…

Antony John Kunnan is a language assessment specialist. His research interests are fairness of tests and testing practice, assessment literacy, research methods and statistics, ethics and standards, and language assessment policy. His most recent publications include a four-volume edited collection of 140 chapters titled "The Companion to…

Scores derived from intelligence instruments predict many important outcomes in life, so it is not surprising that researchers and clinicians seek out interventions aimed at increasing these scores. Dixon et al. (J Behav Educ, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10864-019-09344-7) recently investigated the relation between instruction based on…

This resolution builds on the National Council of Teachers of English's (NCTE's) longstanding policies on students' rights to their own languages, resolutions opposing practices that denigrate home or heritage languages, policies supporting the unique learning needs of the individual, resolutions supporting inclusion of exceptional students, and…

This article provides commentary on "Investigating the Impact of Literacy-infused Science Intervention on Economically Challenged Students' Science Achievement: A Case Study from a Rural District in Texas" (EJ1306217) which is about the impact of educational interventions on the scientific and academic achievements of students from…

It is late at night, after working all day on her postdoctoral research Laura Colombo is trying to wind down while drawing and jotting down thoughts in her notebook. She is in the living room/office of her apartment in Buenos Aires, the city where she was born and left when she was 26 years old to pursue her graduate studies in the United States…

In this article it is argued that the development of young people's skills in using spoken language should be given more time and attention in the school curriculum. The author discusses the importance of the effective use of spoken language in educational and work settings, considers what research has told us about the factors that make group…

This paper is a commentary on how the student population of Canadian universities has changed with the arrival of international students. It discusses some of the issues that instructors have when teaching and interacting with their international students such as overcoming the language barrier, and being aware and respectful of cultural…

The author reflects on foreign-language learning by his EFL students as well as his own foreign-language learning. He concludes by musing on the possible and fantastical devastation on language-ability wrought by strokes.

Acquiring proficiency in the various English language skills and the ability to utilize those skills as a medium of learning is a daunting task. Research suggests that children who do not speak English as their first language (L1) need five to seven years in school before they can perform as well in English as their English peers who are native…

As is the worldwide trend, scientists in China face strong and increasing pressure to publish their research in international peer-reviewed journals written in English. There is an acute need for graduate students to develop the required language skills alongside their scientific expertise, in spite of the distinct division currently existing…