Cognates are known to facilitate second language acquisition and use, as learners tend to assign to a new L2 word the meaning of a similar L1 word. Consequently, for L2 tests that rely largely on lexical items, performance may prove inflated for examinees whose L1 shares many cognates with the language being tested. This article examines the…

This study provides the first national-level assessment of the size and academic performance of immigrant students with interrupted schooling. Exploiting unique aspects of the Educational Longitudinal Study (2002), a national-level survey of U.S. 10th graders, this study identifies students with interrupted schooling and uses multivariate analysis…

This study has two aims: one is to examine whether or not there are individual differences in motivation to read English as a Foreign Language (EFL) among Taiwanese adolescents, and the other is to scrutinize whether or not a gender gap exists among those readers. A total of 252 adolescents, half of them female and the other half male,…

This study investigates whether young heritage speakers, either simultaneous or sequential bilinguals, have limited vocabulary knowledge in their family language compared to matched monolingual counterparts and, if so, what factors help to account for this difference. These factors include age, age at emigration, length of emigration, frequency of…

Although there is a growing body of literature on the development of reading skills of Spanish-speaking language minority children, little research has focused on the development of writing skills in this population. This study evaluated whether children's Spanish early reading skills (i.e., print knowledge, phonological awareness, oral language)…

With the advent of learner-centered approaches to language learning and life skills education paradigm in psychology, language classrooms are conceived a fitting educational setting for life skills intervention. This study investigated reading strategies awareness, as a legacy of humanistic psychology and learner-centered movement, of language…

This study is an attempt to classify raters according to their weighting patterns and explore systematic differences between rater types in the rating process. In the context of an EFL speaking test, 126 raters were classified into three types--form-oriented, balanced, and content-oriented--through cluster analyses of their weighting patterns…

This study reviews a selected sample of 274 research articles on ELT, published between 2005 and 2015 in Turkish contexts. In the study, 15 journals in ULAKBIM database and articles from national and international journals accessed according to convenience sampling method were surveyed and relevant articles were obtained. A content analysis was…

Since the 1980s, task-based language teaching (TBLT) has enjoyed considerable interest from researchers of second language acquisition (SLA), resulting in a growing body of empirical evidence to support how and to what extent this approach can promote language learning. Although transferability and generalizability are critical assumptions for…

Research Findings: This study examined the heterogeneity in Spanish-speaking children's (N = 117; M age = 53 months; SD = 5 months; 57% boys) vocabulary and letter-word skills in English and Spanish after one year of preschool and the extent to which early self-regulation abilities (i.e., executive function and effortful control) were associated…

The study aimed at exploring the psychological as well as educational outcomes of strategies awareness and use. We set out to examine the effect of reading strategic investment on language achievement and problem solving ability (PSA). The participating EFL learners were heterogeneous in terms of reading instruction; two of the intact groups had…

In the last few decades there has been a shift from thinking less about teaching and more about learning. Such a paradigm shift from teacher-centered to student-centered instruction requires students to think about their own learning and to monitor their own learning development and language achievement. Researchers have identified goal setting…

The present study investigated the relative importance of executive functioning, parent-child verbal interactions, phonological awareness and visual skills on reading and mathematics for Chinese children from low-versus middle-socio economic status (SES) backgrounds. A total of 199 kindergarten children were assessed on executive functioning,…

This paper explores the feasibility of an automated, online form of L2 strategy instruction (SI) as an alternative to conventional, classroom-based forms that rely primarily on teachers. Feasibility was evaluated by studying the effectiveness, both actual and perceived, of a five-week, online SI course designed to teach web-based dictionary skills…

Purpose: The goals of this study were to evaluate the impact of short-term phonological awareness (PA) instruction presented in children's first language (L1; Spanish) on gains in their L1 and second language (L2; English) and to determine whether relationships exist between vocabulary size, verbal working memory, and PA in Spanish-speaking…