Experiential learning theory places experience at the center of learning. Kolb's four-stage cycle of experiential learning suggests that effective learners must engage fully in each stage of the cycle--feeling, reflection, thinking, and action. This research assesses the alignment of Kolb's experiential learning cycle with the week-long Summer…

Language students in the UK undertake their "year abroad" with high hopes for a linguistic and social "immersion" experience. However, past research shows that language learning success, while real, can be uneven, and that many Erasmus exchange students form social relations largely with other international students. New…

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a rapidly growing area of both research and practice in all parts of the world, especially in Europe and Asia. As a young discipline, CLIL has a good potential of distinguishing itself from monolingual L2 immersion education models by becoming more flexible and balanced about the role of L1 in…

Is the U.S. Supreme Court inviting litigants to take aim at unraveling injunctions in institutional reform litigation--especially consent decrees in the schools? In "Horne v. Flores" (2009), the court remanded a 17-year-old school reform case to a federal judge with orders to look beyond consent decrees on financing, reducing class…

The potential of TWI to close the achievement gap for English language learners and to provide both native English speakers and native partner-language speakers with access to a high-quality education with positive academic, language, and sociocultural outcomes is clear. In this article, I argue that the realization of this potential for TWI…

Elementary Spanish language immersion programs have become more popular in the educational field in the United States to support the academic achievement of minority students. The final goal of immersion programs is to develop proficiency in the home language and dominant language, identified as first language (L1) and second language (L2), to…

The overseas immersion environment has long been considered a superior context for language learning, supposedly providing unlimited exposure to target language (TL) input and countless opportunities for authentic interaction with expert users. This article focuses on immersion programmes (IPs) for in-service language teachers--a relatively…

This article presents findings from an exploratory research project entitled "Gaelscoileanna and Multicultural classrooms: the potential for transfer to enhance L2 learning experiences". The project focussed on two language immersion contexts in Ireland which, despite obvious differences, share a range of significant commonalities. One…

This study explored characteristics of reading comprehension difficulties among Chinese students learning English as a second language (ESL). Two hundred forty-six Grade 8 English-immersion students in China were administered a battery of reading-related and reading comprehension tests. Three groups of comprehenders matched on age, nonverbal…

The purpose of "Transforming Schooling for Second Language Learners: Theoretical Insights, Policies, Pedagogies, and Practices" is to bring together educational researchers and practitioners who have implemented, documented, or examined policies, pedagogies, and practices in and out of classrooms and in real and virtual contexts that are…

This article explores the beliefs about second language (L2) sociolinguistic competence of four university-level advanced L2 learners. It places particular emphasis on 1) how these university learners conceptualized L2 sociolinguistic competence; 2) how they thought about two different language learning contexts (viz., the L2 classroom versus…

This paper looks at reading in French immersion and how learning French is seen more as a skill rather than a social practice that could be examined through a more critical lens. Most of the teachers often teach students how to read but rarely will they discuss the role of French in Canadian society and how this is manifested in the texts they…

This paper examines the French achievement results of three groups of students: Canadian-born English/French bilingual, Canadian-born multilingual and immigrant multilingual Grade 6 French immersion students, by investigating how the variables of integrative and instrumental motivations, attitudes to the learning situation, French language…

This article addresses the question of how far working memory may affect second language (L2) learners' improvement in spoken language during a period of immersion. Research is presented testing the hypothesis that individual differences in working memory (WM) capacity are associated with individual variation in improvements in oral production of…

This comparative case study (based on observational, interview, and picture-sort data) examines how teachers and students talk about cultural, linguistic, racial, and socioeconomic difference in two elementary Spanish-English two-way immersion programs. In addition, I analyze how those discourses are associated with both contextual conditions and…