Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to examine construct validity evidence for the following 4 lexical diversity measures for use in Spanish narrative samples of children with developmental language disorder and typical language development (TLD): (a) type-token ratio (TTR; Chotlos, 1944; Templin, 1957), (b) hypergeometric distribution D…

States annually report the five languages other than English most commonly spoken by English learners (ELs) as well as the number of ELs who speak each of the "top five" languages. This fact sheet gives an overview of the five most commonly spoken languages in each state during the 2016-17 school year.

This study examined individual-level variability in N400 and P600 ERP correlates of native and nonnative language sentence processing of semantic and grammar information. Twenty-six native English-speaking learners of Spanish as a second language were tested. Participants completed sentence reading tasks in English and Spanish during EEG…

Task-based research has investigated the learning opportunities (e.g. language related episodes) that emerge during heritage and second language learner interactions during writing tasks. However, to date, it is unknown how these peer interactions involving heritage language learners contribute to written texts. Further, given the rise of social…

Reflective thinking, which constitutes an important goal in language teacher education, can be fostered by participating in online communities of practice. This study explored types of reflective discourse generated by novice Spanish language teachers, and associated themes and categories, as they participated in a weekly blog and a…

Although most children learn to communicate in their first language (L1), there is normal and expected variation in their rate of acquisition across all components of the language system. Until recently, most second language acquisition and second language (L2) researchers have assumed that individual differences (IDs) in L1 acquisition are small…

Usage-based approaches to additional-language acquisition have identified numerous determinants of language learning, two of which were the focus of our study: frequency and cue contingency. Specifically, we examined how an immersion experience may impact sensitivity to these two determinants as reflected in the production of 4,808 pairs of nouns…

This study investigates the effectiveness of the PACE approach (Adair-Hauck & Donato, 2002) for grammar teaching in beginning (novice mid/high) second language (L2) Spanish classes. Even though research has reported instructional benefits for PACE in L2 French (Groenveld, 2011), Alutiiq (Branson, 2015), and ESL (Harris, 2017; Ngo, 2018), to…

This research aims to evaluate the predicting role of executive functions, specially inhibition and flexibility, in reading comprehension. Participants were evaluated with inhibition and flexibility measures in first- grade, and later in third- grade their reading comprehension, oral and silent reading fluency, as well as their decoding skills…

Task-based language teaching and interaction are facilitative contexts for instructed second language acquisition and include abundant opportunities for learners to receive authentic input, engage in negotiation for meaning and pushed output, and to receive feedback and direct attention to linguistic features (Goo, 2019, p. 247). Individual…

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), there has been an increase of students receiving special education services in U.S. public schools in the last 20 years (U.S. Department of Education, 2004). Parents are active participants in the educational decision-making process for their children with disabilities, providing…

Previous studies in second language teaching have called attention to the importance and benefits of including reading, especially graded readers (i.e., books adapted to the proficiency level of the students), in the L2 curriculum (Martinez, 2017; Rodrigo, 2018). On one hand, previous scholars have found the following benefits from graded readers:…

In this study we show that the perception of lateral variants by Puerto Rican listeners changes according to who the listener believes is speaking. Puerto Rican listeners heard sentences with target words featuring either rhotic [voiced alveolar tap or flap] or lateral [l] (amo[voiced alveolar tap or flap] -- amo[l]) codas, a sociophonetic…

The unprecedented growth of Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) in new destination states (e.g., Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Tennessee) calls for better understanding of the relation between their bilingual vocabulary skills and English reading achievement. The current study focused on school-age Spanish-English DLLs (N = 60) in…

Wondering about possible reasons for the continuous shortage of bilingual teachers in the U.S., this five-year longitudinal qualitative narrative inquiry examines potential "leaks" in the pre-kindergarten to college (PK-20) Latinx bilingual teacher pipeline (BTP). We adopt Ocasio's Latino Teacher Pipeline framework which establishes…