Explores the effect on pair-task performance of test-takers' familiarity with their partner. Japanese learners performed a series of tasks, once with a friend and again with a person who was not familiar to them. Results support findings in the literature that suggest learners vary their language when interacting with familiar or unfamiliar…

Looks at the link between government needs for language capacity and the availability of languages in formal education. Suggests that despite previous links between education and defense and the availability of federal funding to subsidize languages in schools, the predominant pattern of language enrollment appears to be in response to domestic…

Investigates the contribution of first language (L1) reading ability and second or foreign language (L2) proficiency to L2 reading comprehension, by focusing on the compensation between L1 reading ability and L2 proficiency among Japanese university students. Demonstrates the mutual compensation between L1 reading ability and L2 proficiency. (SG)

Looks at the use of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), the most widely used test to assess the English language proficiency of students applying to colleges and universities in the United States or Canada. Examines the TOEFL in relation to backwash, reliability, administration, validity, and ethics. (Author/VWL)

A weakness of research on minority placement in special education is the tendency to overestimate the homogeneity of populations by failing to disaggregate factors such as language proficiency or to consider other relevant variables, for example, social class or program type. Similarly, certain groups have been understudied, such as English…

In recent years, community colleges have increasingly taken on the task of providing remedial education to its students. For policymakers and educators, understanding why remediation is on the increase is a frustrating problem made so by the complexity of the causes behind it. Are students graduating from high school less prepared or are academic…

Using role play and verbal-report data, this study investigates the sequential organization of politeness strategies of 24 learners of Spanish and whether the learners' ability to negotiate and mitigate a refusal was influenced by length of residence in the target community. Refusal sequences were examined throughout the interaction head acts,…

Ethnic identity and acculturation attitudes were studied in indigenous Sami (earlier named Lapps) and ethnocultural Kvens (descendants of early Finnish-speaking immigrants from the northern part of Sweden and Finland) in Northern Norway. The sample consisted of 674 Sami and 347 Kven high school students ages 16 to 19 years. Ethnic identity was…

The morpho-syllabic Japanese writing system consists of the phonetic scripts of hiragana and katakana, the logographic kanji derived from Chinese characters and the less well researched romaji based on the Roman alphabet. In four experiments we investigated the speed with which Japanese college students read, named, and transcribed romaji as…

Each edition of the IDRA Newsletter strives to provide many different perspectives on the issues in education topics discussed and to define its significance in the state and national dialogue. This issue focuses on Curriculum Quality and includes: (1) Suggestions for Conducting Effective Teaching Demonstrations in Classrooms with Diverse Learners…

This case study explores the learning experiences of three international students who were enrolled in an online master's program offered by a large university in Canada. The aim of the study was to understand the international students' experiences with, and perspectives on, the online learning environment. Findings indicate that previous…

Bilingualism (Sanz, 2000), motivation (Pintrich, 1989), and language aptitude (Grigorenko, Sternberg, and Ehrman, 2000) are crucial individual differences that contribute to successful adult language learning. Since Gardner's (1985) seminal work on motivation, many studies have shown that motivation is dynamic and that it affects language…

This dissertation has examined English proficiency as a mediating social factor within the occupational structure of Puerto Rico. It included an analysis of the educational records of 641 students majoring in industrial engineering, nursing, education and finance of the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez from 1998-2000. The investigation…

No empirical studies exist comparing the effectiveness of the two prevalent foreign language methodologies, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS), at helping students achieve second language acquisition. In turn, the purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to…

An implicit goal of Congress, the Department of Defense, and the armed services is that diversity in the armed services should approximate diversity in the general population. A key aspect of that diversity is the representation of Hispanics. Although polls of Hispanic youth show a strong propensity to serve in the military, Hispanics are…