One of the domains most commonly affected by autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is communication (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Language deficits in children with ASD can be as severe as to warrant a label as nonverbal, or characterized by difficulties with the functions of communication. Additionally, deficits in language for children…

The current study has aimed to compare the objectives, content, teaching-learning process, and evaluation dimensions of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IBDP) Language A1 Course teaching program with those of the teaching programs of high school 12th grade Language and Expression and Turkish Literature courses in relation to…

In this paper, we present a synthesis of a series of studies, carried out by our research groups, from the Greek educational context on teachers' and immigrant students' views on issues of bilingual acquisition and of heritage language learning and teaching. Albeit including heterogeneous samples and employing quantitative and qualitative…

This article explores the linguistic profiles of heritage speakers of Russian and Spanish. Data from the 2009-2013 ACTFL-UCLA NHLRC Heritage Language Project included biographical information as well as speech samples that were elicited using the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview-computer and were rated according to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines…

This paper details results from a three-year study investigating how to help students in Singapore write vivid compositions in Mandarin, the Chinese "mother tongue". Mastery of the mother tongue by Singaporean students has become an important government priority in recent years. The strategies employed by this study included the use of…

The study compared the language instructional delivery system between the nursery schools in rural and urban areas in Osun state. The population consisted of all the nursery school teachers in Osun state. Proportionate random sampling was used to prune down the population. In all 130 nursery school teachers, 68 in urban areas and 62 in rural areas…

"Teaching word" as a complimentary process of teaching Turkish is a crucial field of study. However, studies on this area are insufficient. The only aim of the designed activities that get under way with the constructivist approach on which new education programs are based is to provide students with vocabulary elements of Turkish. In…

Providing a comprehensive survey of cutting-edge work on second language learning, this "Handbook," written by a team of leading experts, surveys the nature of second language learning and its implications for teaching. Prominent theories and methods from linguistics, psycholinguistics, processing-based, and cognitive approaches are…

This article draws on research carried out in a Chinese complementary school in Scotland. The research focused on children's experience of learning to read Chinese and on the strategies that they used to support their learning. Here, I provide an account of one particular aspect of this research, namely the creation of a dialogic space for…

This paper examines the experience of teachers in the use of new technologies to teach the Igbo language spoken in South East Nigeria. The study investigates the extent to which new technologies are available and accessible to Igbo teachers, the competence of the Igbo language teachers in the new technologies and the challenges they face that…

Discussions surrounding assessment in the foreign languages generally focus on the two ends of the teaching/learning process: diagnostic assessment, typically used for placement purposes and administered prior to the start of instruction, and summative assessment, which evaluates learning after instruction for purposes of assigning a grade or…

This article explores some of the distinctive challenges in Chinese language education in schools and discusses how the development of the "Australian Curriculum: Chinese" has responded to these challenges. It details how the curriculum framework outlined in the "Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages" (ACARA, 2011)…

The use of music and song in the English language-learning classroom is not new. While many teachers intuitively feel that music is beneficial in teaching English language, there is sometimes a lack of the theoretical underpinnings that support such a choice. There are examples in the literature to argue the strong relationship between music and…

In this article we present an interactive extensible software, "The 7 Keys of the Dragon," for the teaching/learning of Albanian and Russian to students that attend primary and secondary education in Greece with the respective languages as their heritage languages. We address the key challenges we encountered during the conceptualization…

This case study examined how one instructor navigated between two competing discourses in an intermediate Spanish heritage language (HL) classroom: on the one hand, teaching "Standard Spanish" to help students achieve professional success, and legitimizing home linguistic practices on the other. In addition to expressing both…