Can teenagers' self-efficacy be improved in a short time? Previous research has shown the positive effect of cooperative learning methods, including "jigsaw classrooms" (Aronson and Patnoe, 1997), on various outcomes (e.g., the liking of school, self-esteem, and reduction of prejudices). The present practice report investigated the effects of…

Until recently, the assumption of the language-teaching literature has been that new languages are best taught and learned monolingually, without the use of the students' own language(s). In recent years, however, this monolingual assumption has been increasingly questioned, and a re-evaluation of teaching that relates the language being taught to…

Language learning and teaching of endangered languages have many features and needs that are quite different from the teaching of world languages. Groups whose languages are endangered try to turn language loss around; many new language teaching and learning strategies are emerging, to suit the special needs and goals of language revitalization.…

The article addresses the long-standing issue over the role of the mother tongue in the foreign language classroom. In the first part it is argued that the mother tongue lays the cognitive foundations for all subsequent language learning. Double comprehension as the basic requirement for learning to take place is explained. The second part is…

A number of recent studies (see, for example, Lantolf, 2010; Negueruela & Lantolf, 2006; van Compernolle, 2011) have focused on the use of learning tools developed according to the principles of concept-based instruction (CBI). Using videorecorded data from interviews and observations of classroom instruction, our study seeks to contribute to…

Teachers in classrooms throughout England are facing a shifting demographic in their pupil intake. Where the teaching of children whose first language was not English was once considered an inner-city teachers' role, more recent migration patterns have challenged this preconception. In England in particular, this change sits against an historical…

English Language Learners (ELLs) are among the fastest-growing demographic group in U.S. public schools. There are numerous recent reports documenting this phenomenon. Some reports estimate the numbers of ELLs enrolled in U.S. public schools, and other reports approximate the growth in ELL enrollment over the past five to ten years. Still, there…

This dissertation explores the second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones by speakers of non-tonal languages within the framework of Optimality Theory. The effects of three L1s are analyzed: American English, a stress-accent language; Tokyo Japanese, a lexical pitch accent language; and Seoul Korean, a non-stress and non-pitch accent…

This paper reports on an investigation into the efficacy of a teacher preparation programme that introduced the teaching of African languages to speakers of other African languages in order to produce multi-competent and multi-vocal teachers. A mixed method approach was used to elicit from a pool of 60 (30 experimental; 30 control group)…

While previous research has indicated that learners with field-dependence (FD) and field-independence (FI) cognitive styles benefit differentially from different instructional modes, previous corrective feedback studies have ignored the issue of matching error correction strategies to learners' cognitive style. To shed some light on this issue,…

This study documents how an urban high school science teacher engaged her English Language Learners (ELLs) in the discourse-intensive science and engineering practices of (1) arguing from evidence and (2) obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information. The teacher taught an introductory integrated science course to classes with a large…

This paper examines whether and to what extent data-driven learning (DDL) activities can improve the lexico-grammatical use of abstract nouns in L2 writing. A topic-based corpus was compiled to develop concordance learning activities, and 40 Chinese students majoring in English were randomly assigned to a control group or an experimental group. At…

This paper presents a multilingual mobile learning framework that can be used to support the pedagogical development of mobile learning systems which can support learning in under-resourced multilingual schools. The framework has been developed following two empirical mobile learning studies. Both studies were conducted in multilingual South…

The paper looks at developments in Greek language curricula in Cyprus during three periods: (1) the post-independence era from 1960 to the partition of the island in 1974; (2) the post-partition era from 1974 to 2003; and (3) the contemporary era, including the accession of Cyprus to the European Union in 2004, and the introduction of a new Greek…

This paper aims to (re)engage ESL with the broader literacy debate, by calling for a better recognition of what literacy means for second language learners within contemporary Australian education systems, and acknowledging the specialist professional knowledge that ESL teachers bring to the mainstream. The literacy debate that has shaped so much…