The author primarily delivered comprehensible Spanish input to her novice 3rd and 4th grade Spanish students via stories she revealed and simultaneously illustrated on a white board. To document comprehension, she obtained student retells of the stories. This approach, used over six months, became an action research project with the goal of…

The question going into this action research was, "How can a language teacher encourage more positive attitudes toward language learning while building a learning community?" After incorporating "I Can" statements into the curriculum, more than 100 third grade students were surveyed. The survey asked what they thought they could do in Spanish.…

GLASPORT first convened in October 2009 with funding provided by a Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant. The grant proposal was submitted by then Glastonbury Assistant Superintendent of Schools (and former Foreign Language Director) Christine Brown. The committee was charged with two ambitious objectives: (1) to aid in the development…

The present research study was conducted to explore how structured Spanish instruction (30 minutes, twice a week, for a semester) impacts the level of class participation and on-task behavior and the reading fluency rate of a group of self-contained, special needs, elementary school children (grades K-5). Data for this mixed methodology study were…

In this interview, Eve Wallwork, a junior at David W. Butler High School in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC) School District, talks about her research project on the field of early language learning. Wallwork shares the most important findings of her research, the benefits of early language learning, and her plans in the future.

During the summer of 2005, a longtime Japanese teacher at a K-8 school in southwestern Pennsylvania unexpectedly resigned. The school, unable to recruit a new teacher for the 2005-2006 school year, chose to suspend the teaching of Japanese and to establish a committee to examine the foreign language program within the overall school curriculum. In…

Provides insight into the teaching of modern languages to young learners in Hungary. Demonstrates how different the educational context is from the United States and how the Prussian educational tradition still influences today's processes. Also discussed are language teachers, resources of early language programs, young learners' attitudes and…

Investigated reasons for student choice in foreign-language study when moving from 8th to 9th grade. Eighth graders from districts that varied in how and when they offered foreign languages completed surveys after registering for ninth grade. Their main reasons for language selection were utilitarian, including the desire to satisfy future college…

This paper is another installment in the ongoing project on early language learning in a Japanese FLES program, conducted by ELLRT (Early Language Learning Research Team): Richard Donato and G. Richard Tucker with graduate students from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. The Japanese instructor in this FLES program, Yoko…