Las Americas Middle School is a newcomer program within Houston Independent School District (HISD) that serves students in Grades 4 through 8 who have been in the U.S. for less than one year. As a non-zoned school of choice, Las Americas has no attendance boundary, meaning that students and families must opt to enroll in the school. This brief…

This study examined the role of parents' early home language use in the English reading development of emergent bilinguals (N = 3,058) and how their relations are moderated by children's oral English language proficiency using longitudinal data from kindergarten to eighth grade (ages 6-15 years). Results from multi-group latent basis growth models…

Academics are known as individuals designing and conducting scientific research and they are to hold problem-solving skills, use scientific methods, carry out research, and publish at a global level. That said, they may encounter problems while performing the actions mentioned above due to a lack of foreign language proficiency, which interferes…

The Spanish subjunctive mood (SUBJ) is said to be highly vulnerable in heritage language (HL) acquisition. However, there is little controlled research on HL-speaking children acquiring the various Spanish SUBJ contexts, so we do not have a clear picture of when, how, or why heritage speakers (HSs) develop in the SUBJ as they do. This study tests…

This study investigated the relationship between balanced multilingualism and working memory. Specifically, it reports on the relationship between balanced proficiency in speaking, reading and comprehension (across three languages), and verbal and visuospatial working memory in young South African adults. Information about participants' language…

This study reveals hitherto overlooked effects of age of onset (AO) in immersive school contexts, using multiple measures over time so as to focus on fluctuations and trends in individual data. The second language (L2) English development was studied in 91 children who received 50-50 content and language integrated learning (CLIL) instruction in…

The present article offers a review of the existing literature on L2 gains arising from participation in a study abroad (SA) experience. The purpose of this article is (1) to provide a general overview of research findings on the influence of time abroad on L2 development and (2) to identify the areas which need further research within the SA…

This paper examined language anxiety (LA) in Chinese dialects and Putonghua among college students in mainland China and explored the links between their LA in the first language and a range of sociobiographical variables (i.e. gender and geographical background) as well as linguistic variables (i.e. mother tongue, age of onset of acquisition,…

Key drivers for migrants' social integration are education, employment, and skills in the dominant language of the settlement country. Data from Building a New Life in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Humanitarian Migrants were used to examine migrants' English proficiency and how oral English proficiency facilitated or hindered participation…

"Cunt" is currently one of the most offensive words in the English language and is usually censored in the English press and media. The present study looks firstly at differences between 1159 first (L1) and 1165 foreign (LX) users of English in their perceived understanding of the word, its perceived offensiveness and their self-reported…

The aim of this paper is to analyse some aspects of development of Basque as a second language (L2) in children for whom Spanish is their first language (L1) who attended immersion school in Basque in a Spanish-speaking sociolinguistic context. Data consist of oral story retellings produced in a classroom setting where the same children…

The current study examined the effects of text-based relational (i.e., cohesion), propositional-specific (i.e., lexical), and syntactic features in a source text on subsequent integration of the source text in spoken responses. It further investigated the effects of word integration on human ratings of speaking performance while taking into…

Given the growing importance of English as a lingua franca, this study examines which context (classroom instruction in the students' home country vs. studying abroad in an English-speaking country) better facilitates the acquisition of English by learners of different ages: children, adolescents and adults. Participants (N = 197) completed…

Research on child English as a second language (ESL) learners has shown the benefits of task-based interaction for the use of different negotiation of meaning (NoM) strategies, which have been claimed to lead to second language learning. However, research on child interaction in foreign language settings is scarce, specifically research on a new…

Children's narrative skills have been widely studied in North America, but there is a paucity of African research. Within South Africa's diverse socio-cultural context, this study of mixed-race children explored the development of narrative production and the influence of home background variables. Using the Bear Story picture prompt, this…