Purpose: Spanish-dominant Latinos make up 13% of the U.S. population, and this group is poorer and faces multiple threats to health compared with the general population. Additionally, Spanish speakers face challenges accessing health information that is often not available in Spanish. This study provides a descriptive epidemiology of a unique,…

This study explores the widely documented difficulty children have with object clitics in the acquisition of Romance languages. It reports on two experiments: a production task and a comprehension task. Results from the elicitation task confirm that object omission occurs at nonnegligible rates in 2- and 3-year-olds. Findings from the…

The purpose of this paper is to compare structured input (SI) with other input-based instructional treatments. The input-based instructional types include: input flood (IF), text enhancement (TE), SI activities, and focused input (FI; SI without implicit negative feedback). Participants included 145 adult learners enrolled in an intermediate…

Because reading for meaning only can lead to low rates of second language (L2) vocabulary learning and because previous research has demonstrated the benefits of word retrieval opportunities for intentional L2 vocabulary learning (Barcroft, 2007; McNamara & Healy, 1995a, Experiment 2; Royer, 1973), the present study assessed the effect of…

The present study examined the use and effectiveness of a large corpus--the Corpus del Español (Davies, 2002)--in a 300-level Spanish grammar university course. Students conducted hands-on corpus searches with the goal of finding concordances containing particular types of collocations (combinations of words that tend to co-occur) and tokens (any…

This study investigates the self-reported experiences of students participating in a Galician language and culture course. Galician, a language historically spoken in northwestern Spain, has been losing ground with respect to Spanish, particularly in urban areas and among the younger generations. The research specifically focuses on informal…

The increase of dual language learners in today's classrooms has caused serious implications when examining how the country educates children (McWayne, Melzi, Schick, Kennedy, & Mundt, 2013). Because of the cultural and linguistic differences of these children, it is essential to study teaching practices at the early childhood level. Examining…

As communications in U.S. society become more digitally focused, many schools have transitioned toward using more digital technology for school-home communications. Across the country, many schools and teachers now disseminate information to students' parents using email listserv, text message, Twitter, Facebook, and other applications such as…

A qualitative think-aloud study, informed by social literacies and holistic bilingual perspectives, was conducted to examine how six emergent bilingual, Mexican American, fourth graders approached, interacted with, and comprehended narrative and expository texts in Spanish and English. The children had strong Spanish reading test scores, but…

This qualitative study investigated the language ideologies and instructional practices of an entire Spanish language faculty at a high school in a new gateway state for immigration. The study examined additive and subtractive practices of teachers as they strived to teach Spanish to heritage language learners (HLLs) enrolled in mixed…

This ethnographic study aims to foreground the voices of 34 first through twelfth graders who belong to first-generation immigrant families from Mexico and Central America and attend Nueva Vida Church (fictitious name) in a Midwestern US city. They insightfully reflect upon their language, culture and citizenship during Sunday school class focus…

This work aims to study learners' attitudes towards practicing English Language on Social Networks Sites (SNS). The sample involved 110 students from the University Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabi in Ecuador, and the University of the Basque Country in Spain. The instrument applied was a Likert scale questionnaire designed Ad hoc by the researchers,…

This research is a report on a quantitative study carried out at the English Departments of three public universities in the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Its main purpose was to analyze the strategies English departments coordinators use to enhance the quality of education their institutions provide in terms of bilingualism. The participants were…

This article argues for the value of heritage language programs and the micro-level language policies that support them, focusing on a case study of a program in the USA to make this argument. We also argue for the importance of recognizing students' heritage languages, cultures, and individual goals and identities in mainstream school programs.…

We present findings of a project that investigated the potential of an online tandem program to enhance the foreign language learning of two groups of school-aged beginner learners, one learning English in Colombia and the other learning Spanish in New Zealand. We assessed the impact of the project on students' learning with a free writing…