This paper explores the PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] achievement of twenty countries in light of some of their demographic differences. SES [student socioeconomic status], nuclear family, gender, home language, and native status were predictive of achievement for every country. Demographics accounted for as little as 8…

Contrastive rhetoric studies the writing of second language learners to understand how it is affected by their first language and culture. The field of contrastive rhetoric is as multidimensional as second language writing is complex. It draws on the work of contrastive analysis, anthropology, linguistics, pedagogy, culture studies, translation…

Many learners of a foreign language (L2) struggle to correctly pronounce newly learned speech sounds, yet many others achieve this with apparent ease. Here we explored how a training study of learning complex consonant clusters at the very onset of L2 acquisition can inform us about L2 learning in general and individual differences in particular.…

The present paper synthesizes the international research literature on the educational achievement of immigrant and minority language students by articulating three propositions for which there is strong empirical evidence: (a) print access and literacy engagement play a key role in promoting reading comprehension; (b) the development of bilingual…

Research Findings: The present study evaluated the utility of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) as a teacher-report measure of internalizing and externalizing problems in preschool-age children. Participants included preschoolers drawn from Germany and the United States, with the American sample composed of both English-speaking…

Can teenagers' self-efficacy be improved in a short time? Previous research has shown the positive effect of cooperative learning methods, including "jigsaw classrooms" (Aronson and Patnoe, 1997), on various outcomes (e.g., the liking of school, self-esteem, and reduction of prejudices). The present practice report investigated the effects of…

Until recently, the assumption of the language-teaching literature has been that new languages are best taught and learned monolingually, without the use of the students' own language(s). In recent years, however, this monolingual assumption has been increasingly questioned, and a re-evaluation of teaching that relates the language being taught to…

Formulations of linguistic rights in European official documents reveal important ideological characteristics of the thinking about language in European societies. These ideologies have important consequences for the language policies and education policies pursued by authorities and for the norms of language use promoted by education systems and…

This study examined the abilities of young English as a foreign language (EFL) learners to identify quickly new words from a nonostensive, indirect teaching context (known as fast- mapping) and their ability to commit the words to memory. Seventy-five fourth-grade EFL learners heard novel words embedded in sentences. They were then tested for…

This study describes how intermediate-level first language English readers of Russian as a second language deploy lexical inferencing and other strategies when reading informational texts. Fifth-semester students of Russian performed think-alouds while reading two texts; one written for the general adult reader, and the other meant for school-age…

English literacy skills are important in order to participate fully in public life; however, the heritage-based literacy skills learned outside of the classroom also are critical in the P-12 classroom. School teachers are important advocates for immigrant students--to preserve their first language and heritage, to integrate knowledge of their two…

This compliance report provides information regarding American Indian students' public school performance and how performance is measured. This information is shared with legislators, educators, tribes, and communities and is disseminated at the semiannual government-to-government meetings. The New Mexico Public Education Department (NM PED) is…

This engaging collection examines the personal narratives of a select group of well-respected educators who attained biliteracy at a young age, and in the era before bilingual education. Their autobiographical accounts celebrate and make visible a linguistic potential that has been largely ignored in schools and underscores the inextricable and…

The present study examined the proposal that the presence of a similar morpheme in the learner's first and second languages (L2) facilitates morphological development in the L2. Advanced Russian and Japanese speakers of English as a second language performed a self-paced reading task in which they read English sentences word by word for…

Language learning and teaching of endangered languages have many features and needs that are quite different from the teaching of world languages. Groups whose languages are endangered try to turn language loss around; many new language teaching and learning strategies are emerging, to suit the special needs and goals of language revitalization.…