Adults tend to perceive speech sounds from their native language as members of distinct and stable categories; however, they fail to perceive differences between many non-native speech sounds without a great deal of training. The present study investigates the effects of categorization training on adults' ability to discriminate non-native…

When power tests include a time limit, it is important to assess the possibility of speededness for examinees. Past research on differential speededness has examined gender and ethnic subgroups in the United States on paper and pencil tests. When considering the needs of a global audience, research regarding different native language speakers is…

This article examines the claim that a fully immersive English language learning experience can be ensured by universities engaged in transnational education through offshore campuses. Taking as a case study one South East Asian offshore campus of a Western university, the inquiry was designed to discover the extent to which students did, in…

Heritage language speakers struggle in European classrooms with insufficient material provided for second language (SL) learning and assessment. Considering the amount of instruments and pertinent studies in English SL, immigrant students are better prepared than their peers in Romance language settings. This study investigates how factors such as…

Uganda introduced the use of mother tongue as medium of instruction in primary schools in 2007. This was meant to promote interaction and participation in the learning process and improve children's proficiency in reading and writing. Drawing elements of interaction and participation from the socio-cultural theory, the child-centred pedagogy was…

Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook (FB) are currently highly used by students because technology has the potential to become a valuable resource to support their educational communications and collaborations. This paper attempts to present a comprehensive picture of what has been investigated in terms of the use of Facebook as an…

We seek to understand how teachers that do not share a heritage language with their students can leverage these languages in literacy instruction. This study reports on 5 teachers' implementation of a literacy activity that uses strategic collaborative translation to facilitate middle school English language learners' (ELLs) understandings about…

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 study compared the relationship between the use of Persian vs. English in teaching English grammar to Iranian students and their achievement in learning English grammar. The participants of this study include 50 female students from a junior high school in Mehran. The researcher randomly selected 2 groups, one group was taught through the…

The aim of our study was to examine the relationship between access to the mental lexicon, working memory and knowledge of English (L2) vocabulary. Analyses were undertaken amongst monolingual speakers of Polish (26 with dyslexia, 24 without) who studied English as a second language as part of their compulsory educational programme at school. We…

Motivations of Maori heritage language learners are explored within this qualitative study. "Te reo" Maori (the Maori language) is currently classed as endangered (Reedy et al., 2011), which calls for the exploration of the motivational experiences of Maori heritage language learners. A total of 19 interviews with beginner, intermediate…

Assimilation and ethnicization are mainstream voices in current studies of ethnic relations. The former suspects that current social system arrangements are meant to assimilate minority groups into the cultural system of the mainstream ethnic group, while the latter believes that current systemic arrangements will cause minority groups to tend…

The Chinese state sees language as an essential determinant in ethnic minority schooling. The use of minority language as a medium of instruction is viewed as a way to increase attendance rates and strengthen socialization into a national ideology. However, the policies differ for those ethnic minorities with or without a commonly used written…

We investigate translanguaging (i.e. the co-use of first and second languages) in a Content and Language Integrated Learning course, as a pragmatic means to promote the skill of young university students in extended critical academic writing. We aimed to prepare new undergraduate students (n = 180) for courses where partial English-medium…

Numerous studies hold that interaction has beneficial effects on second language acquisition among adults and children in second language contexts. However, data from children learning English as a foreign language are still unavailable. In order to fill this research niche, this study examines the conversational interactions of 8 pairs of young…