Increasing concern regarding student disengagement and education's role in helping students to navigate the ever-changing realities of a globalized society has focused attention on the importance of 21st century skills. This mixed-methods study investigated whether and how intensely students experienced optimal engagement during a Spanish project…

James P. Lantolf is George and Jane Greer Professor Emeritus of Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics and former director of the Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Applied Linguistics in the same academic unit at Xi'an Jiaotong…

Mediation theory facilitates teachers and students to tackle the barriers in English teaching and learning process. It offers a sound systematic theoretical fort on which teachers could rely, redefines teachers' roles and functionings in the process of learners' cognitive development and growing self-regulations. The famous psychologist Lev…

Preservice teachers must have opportunities in their university teaching programs to apply theories of second language learning. Courses in second language acquisition and English as a second language methodology are essential to prepare mainstream teachers for teaching culturally and linguistically diverse learners. Additionally, creating a…

This book is the first to explore the constitution of language learner agency by drawing on performativity theory, an approach that remains on the periphery of second language research. Though many scholars have drawn on poststructuralism to theorize learner identity in non-essentialist terms, most have treated agency as an essential feature that…

Professional learning communities (PLCs) constitute worthwhile spaces in which to study teacher participation in the reflective practices that have potential to shift their teaching. This qualitative case study details the interactions between dual-language and ELL teachers in a grade-level PLC as they met together to confer over video-clips of…

Due to its continuous advancement, web conferencing technology is increasingly being integrated into foreign language education; thus, teachers are able to carve out a niche by providing learners with an opportunity to learn a foreign language at a distance without time and space constraints. However, little is known about the relationship between…

This phenomenological study (Creswell, 2003, 2007; van Manen, 1997) explores student and teacher perceptions of first language use in French immersion mathematics classrooms at a large, urban high school in Canada. During individual interviews, participants discussed their perceptions and experiences of French immersion mathematics, language use,…

The question of how class size impacts on student learning has been debated for some time, not least because it has substantial financial implications for educational policy. The strength of this debate notwithstanding, results from numerous international studies have been inconclusive. The study from which this paper stems sought to conceptualise…

This dissertation study focused on a feature of emergent interactions in the L2 classroom called unanticipated student utterances (USUs), which is defined as utterances spoken by the student that the teacher has not anticipated as part of the discussion at hand. The purpose of the study was to demonstrate why USUs are significant in the L2…

This paper illustrates teaching for transfer across languages by synthesizing key insights from theory and previously published research alongside our case study data from primary-level teachers in core French-second-language (CF) classrooms in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on research that redefines language transfer as a resource, this study drew on…

This mixed methods classroom research examined if accountability groups in the lower proficiency levels of a university intensive English program would improve students' language acquisition. Students were assigned partners for the study period with whom they completed assignments inside and outside of class, as well as set goals for use of…

Sociocultural theories consider language learning as a social practice examines students as active participants in the construction of learning processes. This study investigates sociocultural theories' central concepts, which includes peer interaction and feedback, private speech, and self-efficacy. The present study is a case study of twenty…

Due to the growing number of plurilingual learners in the world today (Hammarberg, 2010), the present multiple case study examines four plurilingual participants' beliefs toward first language (L1) and second language (L2) mediation in the acquisition of French as a third language (L3). During a 16-week classroom-based study in a French university…

This article illustrates how a classroom community characterized by "confianza"--a feeling of mutual understanding, respect, and emotional closeness--facilitated the English language learning of Spanish-speaking students in a content-based English as a second language class at a Puerto Rican public university. To understand the processes…