This study investigated the validity of measures that were hypothesized to account for significant variance in English reading ability. During kindergarten, 63 bilingual Hispanic children completed letter identification, English and Spanish phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and sentence repetition static assessment tasks. They also…

This paper investigates whether students would be reluctant to do the oral tasks of the Computer Based University Entrance Examination (P.A.U.) in Spain. So far in the Spanish history of education never a foreign language high stakes task has been included in any of the versions of the P.A.U. 60 students took the oral task of the P.A.U. which…

The present preliminary study empirically investigated Spanish heritage language (HL) speakers in Spanish for native speakers (SNS) college courses. It focused on their attitudes and motivation to improve their HL and on their varying linguistic competences in that language. A well-established second language acquisition (SLA) motivational model…

Development of social capital was explored from a scientific evaluation of adult and teen parents (N = 102) who voluntarily participated in a parenting program. Most were unmarried, young, low-income, and Mexican-American. A strengths-based, culturally specific method was utilized to recruit and retain participants. After training, parents had…

The purpose of this study was to assess students' attitudes toward several aspects of biliteracy within the context of a dual immersion program. Attitudes toward perceived competencies in reading in two languages, along with the social and personal values of literacy in each language (English and Spanish), and the personal and social value of…

This study examined the feasibility of using a dialogic book-reading intervention for 22-r41-month-old bilingual preschool children with expressive vocabulary delays. The intervention was provided in English and Spanish concurrently to an experimental group of six children, while six other children were in a delayed treatment control group. Thirty…

The present paper intends to investigate the lexical gap-filling behaviour of primary and secondary Spanish learners of English. When there is a mismatch between the learners lexical knowledge and their communicative needs, then a lexical gap arises. Learners resort to different mechanisms to compensate for that lack of lexical knowledge.…

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…

Action research was conducted for two consecutive semesters comparing beginning level Spanish courses taught in the traditional classroom and the same class taught exclusively in the language lab. A subsequent semester compared an intermediate class taught in the traditional classroom compared to the same class conducted online. Assessment scores…

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…

This study examines heritage-language (HL) experience and identity of 12 adults of mixed-heritage backgrounds through in-depth autobiographical interviews. Each participant has an English-speaking American parent and an HL (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, or Vietnamese)-speaking immigrant parent. The interviews explored each participant's…

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…

Using prospect theory and the extended parallel process model, this study examined the effect of gain/loss message framing on perceptions of severity, susceptibility, response efficacy, and self efficacy (derived from the extended parallel process model), as well as perception of message effectiveness and behavioral intention in a community based…

A randomized, controlled study was conducted to assess the effects of the Nuestros Ninos professional development program on classroom practices and child outcomes related to language development and early literacy skills in both English and Spanish. Fifty-five teachers and 193 Latino dual language learners (DLLs) enrolled in the North Carolina…

Recent studies of heritage speakers, many of whom possess incomplete knowledge of their family language, suggest that these speakers may be linguistically superior to second language (L2) learners only in phonology but not in morphosyntax. This study reexamines this claim by focusing on knowledge of clitic pronouns and word order in 24 L2 learners…