The purposes of this study are: (1) to investigate students' perceptions of computer-assisted whole language instruction; (2) to examine the effectiveness of whole language instruction on students' reading improvement; and (3) to determine the difference between basic-level and advanced-level students' improvement in reading skills. A total of 212…

The present study investigated the influence of concept mapping as a post-reading strategy on EFL learners' critical thinking ability. The study utilized a pretest-posttest control and experimental group design. To do so, thirty six EFL learners at upper intermediate and advanced levels were randomly assigned to experimental (n=18) and control…

Recently ELT has witnessed the debate between the proponents of non-interventionist and interventionist views towards SLA. The former, also known as zero option, sees L2 acquisition as an incidental process leaving no role for instruction (Krashen, 1981; Prbhu, 1987), while the latter considers instruction effective and even crucial for some…

Prompted by the recent shift of attention from just focusing on the top-down processing in L2 reading towards considering the basic component, bottom-up processing, the role of phonological component has also enjoyed popularity among a selected circle of SLA investigators (Koda, 2005). This study investigated the effect of the automatization of…

The past 20 years have witnessed enormous growth in a diverse array of studies which explore the linguistic impact of study abroad (SA) experiences. During this period a multitude of research projects have investigated SLA/L2 learning in SA, in a number of different languages (Russian, Japanese, French, Spanish, English), utilizing diverse…

The integration policies in some Northern European countries display relatively poor outcomes of passed exam rates for immigrant language training, and several groups of immigrants have very low employment rates. These measures, in many countries, are strong incentives for host-country language acquisition in addition to the obligation to document…

This article reviews Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State for English Language Learners ("ACCESS for ELLs"[R]), which is a large-scale, high-stakes, standards-based, and criterion-referenced English language proficiency test administered in the USA annually to more than 840,000 English Language Learners (ELLs), in…

This study describes the realization of onset and coda clusters in a 4-year old child acquiring American English, and with a higher than usual level of unintelligible speech. It reviews previous studies that have tested cluster realization against markedness and, in particular, the sonority hypothesis. This latter predicts steep rises in sonority…

Purpose: Obtaining information on both languages of English language learners for assessment can be a challenge in a multilingual context. It is often difficult or impossible to observe a child's first language directly due to the absence of resources available in every language spoken. The objectives of this study were (1) to develop a parent…

The researchers investigated attributions for success, attitudes, and aptitudes for native language learning and foreign language learning success for 648 students enrolled in 100-level university foreign language courses (Spanish, French, and German). We examined relationships via correlational analyses and used structural equation modeling to…

Gardner's (1983) Multiple Intelligences Theory (MIT) has been found to have profound implications in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in that it provides a way for teachers to recognize learners' individual cognitive and affective differences by providing favorable motivational conditions for learning. However, little investigation…

The aim of this study was to investigate vocabulary knowledge and growth across two different language-learning programmes in Hong Kong. The two programmes compared were English immersion programmes (IM) and regular English second-language programmes (RL2). While previous research has identified an overall advantage to IM with respect to language…

Bilingual children sometimes produce constructions influenced by their other language (cross-linguistic transfer). Transfer can often be predicted by the existence of overlapping and ambiguous constructions in both languages. In this paper, we investigate whether cross-linguistic transfer occurs when overlapping constructions exist, but there are…

This study compared the amount of the second language (L2) use and linguistic gains made by students in three short-term language immersion programs: (1) traditional study abroad, (2) service-oriented study abroad, and (3) foreign language (FL) housing. These were chosen because they represent three distinct program types, providing students with…

The goal of this study is to describe the acquisition rate for gender acquisition in Spanish and to show whether individual variability and language contact may affect this rate. The participants were intermediate second language Spanish (first language English) learners in the study abroad and at-home contexts over a 4-month period. The…