Bilinguals often outperform monolinguals on executive function tasks, including tasks that tap cognitive flexibility, conflict monitoring, and task-switching abilities. Some have suggested that bilinguals also have greater working memory capacity than comparable monolinguals, but evidence for this suggestion is mixed. We therefore conducted a…

Based on 135 ethnic afterschool programs and language schools, this descriptive study (Part 2 of 2 in this issue) revealed differences in the types of programs housed within East, South, and Southeast Asian coethnic communities (strong, weak, or dispersed) in the U.S. The article applies a combined cultural-structural framework to understand…

This qualitative study, examining seven communities in the globalized Asia Pacific area, aimed to investigate Jewish community attitudes toward Hebrew, their heritage language (HL), as influenced by the social environment. The main finding was that the "complex ecology" of context influences attitudes to Hebrew. The article delineates…

Proficient bilinguals use two languages actively, but the contexts in which they do so may differ dramatically. The present study asked what consequences the contexts of language use hold for the way in which cognitive resources modulate language abilities. Three groups of speakers were compared, all of whom were highly proficient Spanish-English…

This research explored the most common writing errors of Science and Arts students of the Foundation year program at a Saudi University that hinder them from achieving their course goals, learning outcomes and becoming efficient writers. The importance of this research stems from the fact that, it is a comparative study that shows the differences…

The present study investigated the longitudinal effects of early exposure to L2-English on L1-Turkish language competence, narrative skills and executive functioning. We asked whether early immersion-like exposure to L2, starting around 3 years of age, would have reflections on L1 competence, L1 narrative skills and gains in cognitive flexibility.…

In this study, we explore how cross-linguistic differences can contribute to children's scientific thinking. We compared first and third grade Chinese students' pre-instructional ideas of the earth expressed in clinical interviews with that of their English-speaking and Greek-speaking counterparts (as recorded in the literature). Inspired by a…

This study examines the English language learning outcomes of young Chinese L1 children when using a digital self-guided learning tool, ABCmouse "English Language Learning Academy" (ABCmouse ELL), created by Age of Learning, Inc. and designed based on principles of second language research. In a pretest, posttest study design, experiment…

This paper documents a cross-sectional look at L1 transfer and L2 contact for learners of English in a UK study abroad (SA) context. The study employed an instructional experimental design over a 6- month period with 34 Chinese students assigned to either an explicitly instructed group or a control group receiving no instruction. Instruction took…

Because English is widely used as a lingua franca, language testers have started to consider the introduction of non-native accents into English listening tests. This study investigates how accents influence test-takers' performance, and also elicits test-takers' subjective perception of accents. Eighty adolescent L1-Mandarin test takers were…

This article reports on a study which employed a flipped classroom strategy to increase the amount of peer dialogue among a group of Iranian EFL learners. The flipped strategy used in this study required the students to study some online materials provided for students via a social network called Telegram. Before attending the class, the…

This paper investigates students' performance in content-subjects in the framework of CLIL programmes in Spain. So far, CLIL research has focused primarily on language attainment in the L2 and the L1, but students' achievements as regards content-subjects have been largely ignored. Competence in Science in the L1 is analysed by comparing pupils…

This article investigates near-native grammars at the syntax--discourse interface by examining the second language (L2) acquisition of two different domains of object movement in Dutch, which exhibit syntax-discourse or syntax-semantics level properties. English and German near-native speakers of Dutch, where German but not English allows the same…

Increasingly, children are engaging in early literacy experiences through digital devices. This raises questions about how electronic reading compares to print reading. To assess this, we randomly assigned 200 children (3-5 years) to be read the same book (1) with auto-narration on a tablet or (2) by a researcher from a print book. Reading was…

This article discusses the interchangeability of three self-report measures for reading anxiety. Despite their differences in target constructs, the three scales have been used for similar lines of research. After computing shared variance between the target scales and examining the behavior of anxiety indexes in relation to the amount of graded…