The failure of schools to include English-language learners (ELL) in their testing programs or the low performance of this particular sub-group on state assessments are some of the major reasons why schools come to be labeled as not meeting adequate yearly progress requirements under "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). According to the…

The increasing number of immigrants living and working in Greece has proven to be a challenge for the social as well as educational policy of this country. In order to help adult immigrants to integrate into society and facilitate their access to the job market, the Greek state has introduced special language education programmes. This paper…

What are the aspirations of Adult ESOL learners and what social and institutional factors constrain them? What are the consequent implications for Adult ESOL practitioners? This paper draws on a corpus of 76 interviews with adult migrants learning English in the UK, analyzing four of them in detail using a case study methodology. Despite the high…

This article focuses on how data from early literacy assessments can help teachers to better instruct English-language learning students. Data from 52 high-risk schools are used to compare the progress of English learners and English-only students on a variety of literacy assessments. Results reveal that a much higher percentage of…

This study determined the degree to which the phonological and executive components of memory reflect language-specific capacities in reading achievement. We tested whether the memory processes in a sample of English-language learners that played a major role in predicting second-language acquisition and risk for reading disability (RD) in Grade 1…

This article reports on an empirical study undertaken at the University of the North, South Africa, to test personal classroom observation and anecdotal evidence about the persistent gap between writing and spoken proficiencies among learners of English as a second language. A comparative and contrastive analysis of speech samples in the study…

In a period of declining state support for education, we argue S/FL teachers and teacher educators would do well to become oriented to language program preservation and advancement. We discuss three areas such an orientation could take, namely organizing, direct action, and fundraising, so that teachers and students can become more involved in…

Over the past few years, the author has often been invited to speak to various audiences on topics related to the development of English-language proficiency. The audience response and the kinds of questions asked led her to share the framework that she has adopted, some visual representations that illustrate the key concepts embedded in the…

English-speaking Pakistani university students responded to the Sahin-Francis Attitude toward Islam Scale, along with other religious measures and a social desirability scale. This scale was multidimensional. Correlations with religious measures confirmed its validity and were not explained by a social desirability response set. These data…

As national boundaries have lost their traditional significance over the past thirty years through increased travel, global telecommunications, and international trade and investment, it has become important for individuals to possess firsthand experience with other cultures. Traditionally, American undergraduates accomplish this by studying…

The importance of preparing students for citizenship in a global society is well recognized in teaching sociology. Although options have emerged to facilitate such pedagogical experiences, few concentrate on maximizing students' experiences in non-English-speaking nations. How can we help sociology students get the most out of an experience in a…

Four eye-tracking experiments examined lexical competition in non-native spoken-word recognition. Dutch listeners hearing English fixated longer on distractor pictures with names containing vowels that Dutch listeners are likely to confuse with vowels in a target picture name ("pencil," given target "panda") than on less confusable distractors…

Alternative assessment procedures have made consistent inroads into second and foreign language assessment practices over the last decade. The original impetus for alternative assessment methods has been predicated more on the ideological appeal this approach offers than on firm empirical evidence that alternative assessment approaches actually…

This paper explores the effectiveness of initial vernacular education for successful transfer to English. The data is drawn from the personal, innovative experiences of a local vernacular elementary school teacher in Papua New Guinea, who helped individual children to gain literacy skills in the local vernacular. As a result, the children were…

In Spanish-monolingual Colombia, social pressures push for access to early 50 = 50% Spanish-English medium instruction from the age of five. Parents and school administrators consider this the best way to achieve bilingualism. This article takes a first general look at the effects of this type of bilingual education on the Spanish and English…