IELTS scores are widely used in combination with academic results as a way of judging whether non-English background students should be admitted to degree-level courses in Anglophone contexts. However, successful study at university requires more than language competence and intellectual ability and international students often seem to start from…

This paper aims at focusing how the lack of pragmatic competence affects student's communication in L2 (Second language) at tertiary level. The city based Indian students learn English which is their second language from 3 years onwards whereas the rural based students learn English only from 6 years onwards. This exposure of the L2 shows the…

Reading comprehension of school-aged students is an important topic of research; however, research on the reading comprehension of adult foreign/second language learners whose first language is English is limited, especially studies investigating the reading comprehension strategies that readers of different proficiency levels use when they…

It is widely accepted that L2 learners often face communication problems due to lack of competency in the target language and familiarity with its culture of origin. One way to resolve miscommunication problems is to seek clarification of the utterance; this process is called "repair negotiation" (Nakahama et al. 2001). Repair…

This study mainly aims to investigate the preferences of language learning strategies by English Language Teaching Department students. Oxford's five-scale Likert type inventory, consisting of 50 items on the use of language learning strategies, was administered to 189 participants at the ELT department of C¸anakkale Onsekiz Mart University,…

Prior studies on novice teachers' adjustment to the school environment have shown that many new teachers adopt the teaching practices of existing teachers. By exploring the reasons why new teachers with a proficient command of English end up conducting English classes in Korean, this study analyzed factors influencing the socialization of new…

Subtractive bilingualism is widespread throughout Siberia, with indigenous youth often more proficient in Russian than in their non-Russian local languages. Siberia's national schools, which are secondary schools offering instruction in local languages of Russia, provide critical institutional support for minority languages. The goal of this…

This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency heritage language (HL) learners of Russian converge with monolingual (L1) speakers or proficiency-matched foreign language (L2) learners in their interpretation of aspectual pairs and whether the absence of convergence arises in the lexical component of…

Based on the informal language learning theory, language learning can occur outside the classroom setting unconsciously and incidentally through interaction with the native speakers or exposure to authentic language input through technology. However, an EFL context lacks the social interaction which naturally occurs in an ESL context. To explore…

Skilled writers have at their disposal a range of rhetorical strategies for positioning themselves as competent members of a particular discourse community, including the judicious use of self-referential pronouns (e.g. "I," "she," "he") to overtly signal authorial presence. However, while researchers routinely recommend that second language (L2)…

The recent availability of nationally mandated academic English proficiency data on all English language learners (ELLs) from landmark United States federal education legislation now makes it possible to track these learners' academic progress longitudinally. Using 5 waves of 9th through 12th grade academic English proficiency data from 2004-2008…

Although research has consistently shown that a bilingual's two languages interact on multiple levels, it is also well-established that bilinguals can vary considerably in their proficiency in the second language (L2). In this paper we review empirical studies that have examined how differences in L2 proficiency modulate cross-language…

This study investigates the phonological nature of the lexical links in the bilingual lexicon using different-script bilinguals. Highly proficient Hindi-English bilinguals performed a translation recognition task (i.e., decide whether two words presented sequentially are a correct translation pair). For the critical trials, the second word was a…

Principals face a tangled web of accountability for several reasons: NCLB shifted the focus of programs for English language learners (ELLs). Success is no longer viewed with the single lens of meeting English proficiency, but rather with a magnifying glass to ensure that students "will meet the same challenging state academic content and…

This retrospective study examined L1 achievement, intelligence, L2 aptitude, and L2 proficiency profiles of 208 students completing two years of high school L2 courses. A cluster analysis was performed to determine whether distinct cognitive and achievement profiles of more and less successful L2 learners would emerge. The results of…