Children with low socioeconomic status and language-minority backgrounds generally have weak precursory skills (language and emergent literacy) for learning written language. These skills can be stimulated through interactive reading sessions. Our innovative study for French-speaking Belgium aimed to evaluate the effects of an interactive reading…

There is a consensus among language teachers and researchers that language course design is always a work in progress. This is influenced by variables such as the type of language being taught and whether the teaching of this language has been researched. Arabic is one the languages that have created a perennial debate among its teachers about the…

In England, Higher Education institutions, together with the schools whose staff they train, are being required to incorporate synthetic phonics as one of the key approaches to the teaching of reading. Yet even if synthetic phonics can be identified as one of the component "skills" of reading, an assumption vigorously contested in this…

This guide highlights problems Vietnamese speakers are likely to have in learning English because of differences between the two languages and suggests ways of helping Vietnamese students of English over difficulties caused by these differences. The first section of the guide provides an overview of the Vietnamese language: the alphabet, word…

"EFF HOT (Highlights on Teaching Topics) Topics" is a publication of the EFF (Equipped for the Future) Center for Training and Technical Assistance. Each issue concentrates on a specific topic, highlighting examples of actual practice and offering strategies and tools for using EFF in the classroom. In this issue, "HOT Topics" focuses on the EFF…