This study examined relationships between language learning motivation and the longitudinal development of second language (L2) pronunciation. Twenty-six English-speaking learners of Spanish recorded a simplified picture description task 5 times over a year-long period spanning their 2nd, 3rd, and 4th semesters of Spanish language instruction.…

The mission of universities today is not only to nurture experts in various professions, but also to cultivate lifelong autonomous learners. Independent learning and pedagogies that aim to foster learner autonomy have grown in importance over the past decade. However, the extent to which independent learning is successful in fostering autonomy has…

Writing at the doctoral level presents many challenges for second language writers. This paper reports on a longitudinal study investigating English as a second language (ESL) doctoral students' writing problems and the strategies they developed to meet these challenges. Eight students were interviewed four times over a two-year period during…

The transition from primary to secondary school is an area of concern across a range of curriculum subjects and this is no less so for foreign language learning. Indeed problems with transition have been identified in England as an important barrier to the introduction of language learning to the primary school curriculum, with implications for…

This study explored the longitudinal changes of Japanese EFL learners' psychological attributes of unwillingness to speak English in a task-based classroom. Thirty-three university students participated in this study. They engaged in a communicative task once a week for two semesters. They completed a questionnaire examining the psychological…

Previous research in first (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition has provided evidence that linguistic confidence is a key construct that can explain linguistic behaviour. In this paper, we apply previous research in the socio-contextual model of L2 learning to data from Catalonia. More specifically, the paper investigates linguistic…

This study examines the impact of L2 literacy on the development of writing proficiency in the L3, as related to age of onset (AO) of instruction, as well as the effects of AO on ultimate L3 attainment at the end of the period of normal schooling. Using longitudinal data for the same student cohort (200 Swiss learners of English) at the beginning…

Introduction: The development of immigrant students' language proficiency is one of the main challenges facing education professionals today. Our study was a longitudinal analysis of Catalan and Spanish language acquisition. Method: Participants were 72 immigrant students (27 Spanish speakers and 45 non-Spanish speakers) enrolled in compulsory…

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has become a very popular approach in the belief that it may help to improve students' foreign language proficiency. Although some research has been conducted, there is a dearth of longitudinal studies on students' awareness of their language learning process in CLIL programmes. In this paper, 221…

Combining psychological and social perspectives and using mixed methods, this 4-year longitudinal study examined the EFL learning and self-identity development of about 1,000 students from 5 universities in Beijing, China. The self-designed questionnaire, administered 5 times during the 4 years, consisted of 7 identity categories of identity…

Socio-emotional development is increasingly recognised as playing a central role in children's academic achievement. However, little is known about the socio-emotional development of language-minority children on entry to school and how these children fare in comparison to their language-majority peers. To address this gap, longitudinal data on…

This study investigates pupils' anxiety and enjoyment in the classroom when learning a second or foreign language. The particularity of this study lies in the comparison of two target languages (English and Dutch) in two educational contexts (CLIL and non-CLIL) at different instruction levels (primary and secondary education). While most research…

Provision for students learning English as an additional language (EAL) frequently overlooks the linguistic resources these children bring to the classroom. This is despite international research that highlights the facilitative links between support of the home language and the acquisition of new languages. This article reports on a longitudinal…

"Diálogos" is an English/Spanish parent group at a bilingual school in California that offers language classes to parents of varying socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Situated within Yosso's (2005) model of community cultural wealth, this case study argues that parents positively evaluate "Diálogos" as a space that builds…

Adopting a longitudinal design, this study investigates the effects of foreign language anxiety on foreign language proficiency over time within English and Japanese learning contexts. It also explores the stability of anxiety in English and Japanese over time and the stability of anxiety across English and Japanese. Chinese university students (N…