This commentary reviews recent literature on a number of problematic issues arising from the use of English proficiency tests by registration bodies as the sole assessment of the professional communication skills of overseas qualified health professionals from non-English-speaking backgrounds. It discusses differences between the assessment…

The authors describe a quantitative approach based on Rasch measurement theory for evaluating classroom assessments within the context of foreign language classes. A secondary purpose was to examine the effects of two instructional approaches to teach grammar, a guided inductive and a deductive approach, through the lens of Rasch measurement…

The authors present a model of lexical proficiency based on lexical indices related to vocabulary size, depth of lexical knowledge, and accessibility to core lexical items. The lexical indices used in this study come from the computational tool Coh-Metrix and include word length scores, lexical diversity values, word frequency counts, hypernymy…

The current study uses Garcia Coll et al.'s (1996) developmental competence model of ethnic minority children and Kim's (1999) racial triangulation theory as frameworks for investigating the mechanisms whereby early adolescent English proficiency relates to perceived discriminatory experiences and adolescent depressive symptoms. Data from 444…

Community colleges are critical points of access for language-minority students and others historically underrepresented in U.S. higher education. Yet there is evidence that community colleges are far from reaching their potential as a stepping-stone to 4-year colleges and universities for underrepresented minorities, especially in states with the…

Learning context has increasingly been postulated to exert an influence on the dynamics of individual differences in language learning. In a longitudinal design that tested the proficiency gains of 1,682 learners over a 2-year foreign language program, a multilevel modeling approach was deployed in this study to account for variation in second…

Present conceptualizations and measures of self-esteem do not account for linguistic self-esteem, an aspect of the self specifically relevant for bilingual students. This study examines the utility of a newly developed measure of linguistic self-esteem. This novel measure is compared with a commonly used self-esteem measure, two standardized…

This study examines the role of transfer from English in the acquisition of double-que questions in Spanish among 17 heritage speakers in the US. Results from an elicited production task, an acceptability judgment task and a preference task revealed significant difficulties in the production and acceptability of double-"que" questions. In contrast…

Researchers often point to the work of Cummins (1981), who proposed that two distinct types of language proficiency exist, basic interpersonal communications skills (BICS) and cognitive/academic language proficiency (CALP). BICS includes aspects of language such as basic vocabulary and pronunciation, skills that are readily apparent during…

This research investigates the link between mathematic teachers' use of English-language learner (ELL) strategies and the mathematics achievement of their students who are ELLs. Interviews and observations of mathematic teachers who taught ELLs were used to document instructional strategies use. The findings from the interviews and observations…

Studies testing the knowledge of syntactic properties have resulted in two potentially contrasting proposals in relation to third language acquisition (TLA); the Cumulative Enhancement Model (Flynn et al., 2004), which proposes that previously learned languages will positively affect the acquisition of a third language (L3); and the "second…

This paper explores the gender effect on the use of communication strategies (CSs). The study collected the data of 36 Chinese EFL learners when they fulfilled communicative tasks as the basis for analysis. The statistical results show that no sex-related significant, direct effect was identified on the frequency and types of CS use, but the sex…

Foreign language educators as well as educators from other disciplines agree that learning any foreign language improves student language skills and stimulates creative thinking and flexibility to use the language. The purpose of the current quantitative, correlational study was to examine the relationship between student proficiency in Spanish…

The main objective of the current study is to investigate L2 Japanese learners' ability to segment complex sentences from aural input. Elementary- and early intermediate-level L2 learners in general have not developed the ability to use syntactic cues to interpret the meaning of sentences they hear. In the case of Japanese, recognition of…

Some heritage language learners (HLLs) are comfortable identifying themselves as such, while others are decidedly reluctant to adopt this term (Pino & Pino, 2000). HLLs in this paper are defined as those students having a parent or grandparent who speaks German or those who have spent a significant part of their childhood in a German-speaking…