Aboriginal communities across Canada are implementing Aboriginal language programs in their schools. In the present research, we explore the impact of learning through an Aboriginal language on students' English and Aboriginal language skills by contrasting a Mi'kmaq language immersion program with a Mi'kmaq as a second language program. The…

The major portion of this paper is devoted to delineate the types of errors made by Arab learners of English in the area of the article system. By so doing, the paper classifies learners' errors according to the Surface Structure Taxonomies of errors, and illustrates the possible sources of these errors. In order to overcome learners' difficulties…

This study examined the attitudes of high school social studies teachers toward the training they received to teach English language learners (ELLs) in their social studies classrooms. This issue is important because the number of ELLs in American schools increases each year and high school social studies classes are the one place for ELLs to…

How well are our schools preparing students to become global citizens who can communicate in languages other than English? To answer this question, we surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 5,000 U.S. public and private elementary and secondary schools. Results identify current patterns and shifts over time in five key areas of…

Heritage learners comprise a substantial proportion of second language learners, including L2 Korean learners. Previous studies have shown that the vast majority of heritage language learners display weakness in orthographic accuracy. Due to their previous extended exposure to oral discourse and limited experience in written language, heritage…

Recent discussions on English as an International Language have highlighted the important role played by English language popular culture for the identities and bilingual development of diverse global citizens who learn and use English. However, there has been little attention to connections between popular culture and "teacher"…

This study investigates what beginning learners of Chinese perceive as helpful in learning to recognize characters. Thirteen English-speaking participants in a beginning Chinese class answered journal questions and completed a survey over one semester at a large Midwestern university. Findings suggest that participants perceived the usefulness of…

While it is common for teachers to focus on learners' errors in the EFL classroom, little attention is given to the "errors" that native English speakers make in their mother tongue. This paper reports on a study to assess the reaction of Japanese university students to an activity that primarily required identifying…

In this article, I report on a small project involving the use of guided reading groups, levelled texts and running records in a multilingual primary school in Singapore. I focus on running records and ask whether their use is suitable pedagogically and practically for the Singaporean context. The analysis of 22 records of primary one and primary…

What do students and teachers believe about the second language learning process? What if these beliefs are in conflict with each other or with prevailing applied linguistic theories? These are the types of questions that are investigated within folk linguistic research. Some researchers have taken a quantitative approach that relied on…

This article presents the context and framework for evaluation studies of educational transformations associated with the English in Action Project, Bangladesh (EIA) as it progresses over a nine-year period. EIA was launched in May 2008 with the intention of developing communicative English language learning and teaching in Bangladesh. Through a…

While there is growing evidence that pronunciation teaching can work, there is a need to establish what it is that makes it work. The study reported here tested for the effect of two particular factors: socially constructed metalanguage (SCM) and critical listening (CL). SCM is a term proposed for metalanguage developed by students working…

The objective of this research study is to offer a glimpse into the lives of some newly-arrived students of different racial, linguistic and religious backgrounds as they confront the process of immigration and therefore personal and social displacement within the context of a Toronto inner-city high school. These students carry with them hidden…

This is an instrumental case study and consists of the description, analysis and interpretation of the teaching practices of a Spanish college instructor. The aim of this research project is to find answers to the following questions: What is the ratio of L1-L2 spoken in class? For what functions is each language used? And, are there…

Narratives of classroom life--the type that blend analysis with artistry, in the form of plays, poems, stories, and the like--remain relatively uncommon within language education research. Yet such narratives have the potential to make a significant and timely contribution to the field, given the ways in which knowledge is being reconceptualised…