Increasing concern regarding student disengagement and education's role in helping students to navigate the ever-changing realities of a globalized society has focused attention on the importance of 21st century skills. This mixed-methods study investigated whether and how intensely students experienced optimal engagement during a Spanish project…

State-issued seals and certificates of biliteracy are increasingly common nationwide. Nevertheless, limited research to date has examined how this state legislation functions as language in education policy and the ideological foundations of these policies. Addressing this gap, the present paper examines state seals as an instance of neoliberal…

This study profiled Intermediate-level learners in terms of their linguistic characteristics and performance on different proficiency tasks. A stratified random sample of 300 Korean learners of English with holistic ratings of Intermediate Low (IL), Intermediate Mid (IM), and Intermediate High (IH) on Oral Proficiency Interviews-computerized…

The present study examined the perspectives of language administrators and teachers regarding Seal of Biliteracy (SoBL) implementation. Utilizing three school districts in Illinois as case studies, this study investigated the ways in which the SoBL was implemented in each district, offering insight into what worked well in each unique school…

The ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and accompanying proficiency guidelines have become a mainstay in academic foreign language assessment. In 2006, an asynchronous electronic interface of the OPI was made available in which candidates are asked to record themselves responding to questions delivered aurally via computer, labeled the Oral…

This article reports the findings of sociolinguistic research investigating the use of second-person singular pronouns in Costa Rica. The study was carried out onsite and involved 132 interviewees from all seven provinces of the country. These subjects reacted to scenarios in which they had to choose their preferred pronoun of use…

While study abroad homestays are often credited with providing opportunities for language and cultural learning, at times they can be characterized by communicative, cross-cultural, or interpersonal discord. In documenting these conflicts and their consequences, research to date has relied largely on students' self-reports, often focusing on their…

Scholars and professional organizations have described participation in target language (TL) communities as one of the primary aims of language learning, but little work has been done to determine how students define those communities or envision their own involvement within them. This exploratory study drew on questionnaire and interview data to…

Previous research on foreign language classroom participation has shown that oral production has a privileged status compared to less salient forms of participation, such as mental involvement and engagement in class activities. This mixed-methods study presents an alternative look at classroom participation by investigating the relationship…

This study investigated interrogative structures most frequently used by native speakers of French, in an attempt to reconcile differences between language forms taught in the French as a foreign language classroom and those that are encountered in authentic input. Radio, television, and magazine interviews provided multiple examples of…

Studies investigating teacher candidate performance on traditional assessments of content knowledge place emphasis on just one of many skills needed to be an effective foreign language teacher; they also fail to explain why many teacher candidates with advanced oral proficiency struggle in the classroom and why some with less advanced language…

While studies have been done to rate the validity and reliability of the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and Oral Proficiency Interview-Computer (OPIc) independently, a limited amount of research has analyzed the interexam reliability of these tests, and studies have yet to be conducted comparing the results of Spanish language learners who take…

Previous research has examined world language classroom-based assessment practices as well as the impact of the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 1999) on practice. However, the extent to which K-12 teachers' assessment practices reflect national and state…

This study considers the opinions of dual immersion elementary school principals in investigating the following research questions: (1) What do dual immersion principals identify as the skills and traits for the school leader that lead to the principal's success in a dual immersion context? and (2) What were the differences of opinion, if any,…

This study examines the effects of form-focused instruction (FFI) on the acquisition of subject-verb inversion word order in declarative sentences in German. A group of U.S. college students who participated in a semester-long study abroad program in Germany and were comparable in terms of preprogram oral proficiency levels and accuracy scores in…