This collaboratively authored piece highlights Poetry Inside Out, a poetry translation program that creates new pathways for culturally and linguistically sustaining literacy education. In Poetry Inside Out, students collaborate to translate world-class poems from their original language (e.g., Spanish, Chinese) into English. Informing PIO's…

This article begins by making the case for biliteracy development in today's K-12 students. It goes on to describe several types of standards developed in the United States for this purpose, using a set of standards that addresses a non-English language and content development simultaneously as an example for the remainder of the piece. The…

This article reports on the partial results of a longitudinal study I conducted to investigate the first-year students' experiences in dealing with the challenges they face while attaining the academic literacy skills required of them and constructing their academic identities at an American university in the UAE. While the challenges encountered…

The process toward academic literacy aims at developing academic reading and writing together with higher academic competences of increasing relevance for undergraduate students as future teachers and researchers. Such a process is even more complex in ELT vocational courses where non-English speaking trainees study English as a system while they…

Although immigrant youth make up more than 20 percent of school-age children in the U.S., little is known about how they manage school assignments and texts. In this paper the author presents Tara (pseudonym) as a telling case of a first-generation immigrant youth who is encountering and grappling with academic literacy--defined as not only the…

How university students write from sources has been an issue of long-standing interest among researchers of advanced academic literacy. Previous research in this regard in the context of L2 writing has tended to focus on novices' textual borrowing; less attention has been given to exploring the potential light that theories from other intellectual…

Currently the United States is home to a large and increasing immigrant population. Many of these immigrant students use community-based programs for their educational needs. Despite the large number of immigrant students who currently use alternate resources, such as churches and community centers, for education, adult language learners in…

This interpretive study explores the writing and writing experiences of 2 bilingual, Mexican, immigrant undergraduates at a US university. Hornberger and Skilton-Sylvester's (2003) continua model of biliteracy situates writing interactions to understand how students explore and draw on their bilingual and bicultural resources as they develop…

The "Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School" practice guide was developed by the What Works Clearinghouse™ (WWC) in conjunction with an expert panel to support teachers in providing language instruction. The practice guide provides teachers with guidelines and examples of ways to…

Although summer is a glorious time for many, with a summer off, comes the real issue of potential loss of skills. When English language learning is taken into account, summer has an even greater potential for backslide not only in terms of content but also in English language development. For some ELLs, a summer away from school can also mean a…

Bilingualism brings about many social, economic, and academic opportunities, and bilinguals certainly experience some joy in acquiring a new language. Yet, the challenge of acquiring proficiency in a second language for successful use in a mainstream university curriculum can be overwhelming. This qualitative case study explores the processes by…

Learning to perform academic writing in university content classrooms is a major challenge facing nonnative-English-speaker (NNS) students. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) offers new possibilities for bidirectional peer-to-peer scaffolding in which students interact and negotiate meaning concerning academic writing and thus represents a new…

The discourses of academic disciplines in higher education can be confusing and mysterious for those who are new to university study. The confusion can be particularly great for students coming from cultural and language backgrounds that are different to those underpinning the dominant ideologies of higher education institutions. This article…

Notes that to be considered literate in the age of information demands functional, academic, critical, and technological skills. Contends that technology must become an integral part of English as a Second Language (ESL) courses. Describes how to use the Internet as part of a sustained content-based pedagogy to develop ESL students' literacy…

This theme issue focuses on strategies to enhance learning of English as a second language and on the importance of bilingual education. In "Bilingual Education Makes the Difference in Learning," Roberto Feliz, who was born in the Dominican Republic and is now a doctor, describes how bilingual education saved him from academic failure…