The current emphasis in second language teaching lies in the achievement of communicative effectiveness. In line with this approach, pronunciation training is nowadays geared towards helping learners avoid serious pronunciation errors, rather than eradicating the finest traces of foreign accent. However, to devise optimal pronunciation training…

English language learners (ELL) are typically instructed in general education programs that do not have bilingual instructional support (Zehler et al., 2003). Teachers instructing those students must focus on strengthening the students' English language skills because language is such a primary component for learning and achieving. Instructional…

As language learning involves the acquisition of thousands of words, teachers and learners alike would like to know how vocabulary learning can be fostered, especially in EFL settings where learners frequently acquire impoverished lexicons, despite years of formal study. Research indicates that reading is important but not sufficient for…

To explore the impact of the communication medium on building common ground, this article presents research comparing learner use of reception strategies in traditional face-to-face (FTF) and in synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC). Reception strategies, such as reprises, hypothesis testing and forward inferencing provide evidence of…

Though e-mail has become a common interpersonal communication medium, it does not mean that this medium is used without difficulty. While people can write e-mails to peers in any manner they like, writing e-mails to authority figures requires higher pragmatic competence and critical language awareness of how discourse shapes and reflects power…

Most teaching and reference materials on English idioms are primarily intuition based. As such, they often include seldom-used idioms and incorrect descriptions of the meaning and use of some idioms, hence limiting their usefulness to ESOL students. This article demonstrates how this problem can be addressed through a corpus-based study of the…

The focus of the present paper is on the relationship between national identities and foreign-language education policies and practices. The paper examines this relationship through a juxtaposition of three sociohistoric contexts in which sociopolitical events led to major changes in foreign-language education: post-World War I United States,…

This study examines the effect of training in think alouds on literal and higher-order reading comprehension. Thirty-two (n = 32) eighth grade students of English as a foreign language (EFL) participated in the study. The participants were randomly assigned to control and experimental conditions. Descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients,…

Although No Child Left Behind (NCLB) aims to close the achievement gap that parallels race and class, some of its key provisions are at odds with reforms that are successfully overhauling the large, comprehensive high schools that traditionally have failed students of color and low-income students in urban areas. While small, restructured schools…

This study investigates the problems that translators and Arab learners of English encounter in translating Arabic sentences containing the Arabic discourse marker "fa" into English. Several types of texts were surveyed in order to identify the salient functions that this marker has in Arabic discourse. Five major functions were identified:…

The present study examines the role of a Vietnamese heritage language school in cross-cultural adaptation, as operationalised by the confluence of two independent variables, language competence and integrated cultural identity. To characterise the students' language competencies and degree of integrated cultural identities, interview…

This paper explores what kinds of advantages and strengths the process of learning to read simultaneously in different languages and scripts might bring about. It is based on a socio-cultural view of learning and literacy and examines early literacy in three parallel literacy classes in Watford, England. It analyses the learning experiences of…

The indigenisation and internationalisation of Taiwan emerged as issues of national concern as a result of the democratisation of politics in the late 1980s which profoundly changed the sociopolitical and economic climate. One manifestation of these changes was "new" language-in-education policies. These were the…

Background: The aim of the present study was to examine the literacy achievement of 10- to 12-year-old native and non-native children with intellectual disabilities (ID) living in the Netherlands. An intriguing question within this context was whether the second language learning non-native children with ID would show a double disadvantage when…

This article deals with an ethnographic study that provides insight into the educational experiences of six Mexican immigrant students in one Texas urban middle school. The students shared their perceptions about the teaching strategies used by their non-ESL teachers. This research was conducted to gain some insight into the world of young…