The National Research Council (NRC) report on the disproportionate representation of minority students in special and gifted education represents an opportunity to draw national attention to the challenges faced by educators as they attempt to provide high-quality educational opportunities for students from culturally and linguistically diverse…

An analysis of 100 Flemish high-school students' attitudes towards French and English (both "foreign" languages) revealed complex links between personality factors, gender, politicocultural identity, communicative behaviour and foreign language attitudes. Attitudes towards English were found to be much more positive than those towards French,…

A successful collaboration resulted in a researcher and a teacher linking professional development with change in small-group reading instruction and student achievement. The context was a two-way Spanish-English bilingual immersion first-grade classroom with many English language learners (ELLs), located in a low-performing, high-poverty school.…

This article reviews experimental studies comparing bilingual and English-only reading programs for English language learners. The review method is best-evidence synthesis, which uses a systematic literature search, quantification of outcomes as effect sizes, and extensive discussion of individual studies that meet inclusion standards. A total of…

This article presents a framework that identifies areas of expertise necessary for mainstream teachers to be prepared to teach in classrooms with native and non-native English speakers. Currently, explicit attention to the linguistic and cultural needs of English Language Learners (ELLs) is lacking in most teacher preparation programs. A recent…

A bibliometric approach is used not only to sketch out the development of CALL during the last 25 years, but also to assess the contribution of educational technology to 21st century foreign-language teaching and learning. This study is based on the six instalments of the author's International (and multilingual) Bibliography of Computer Assisted…

Recently a number of quasi-experimental studies have investigated the potential of a cross-modality transfer of second language competency between real-time, conversational exchange via text and speech (Abrams, 2003; Beauvious, 1998; Kost, 2004; Payne & Whitney, 2002). Payne and Whitney employed Levelt's (1989) model of language production and…

An analysis was conducted of relevant documents published by federal and provincial governments and other French as a Second Language (FSL) stakeholders to examine whether governmental and school board policies are contributing to the general decline in status of FSL instruction in Canada. Federal documents published by the Office of the…

This study tracks the development of cognitive academic language proficiency of 47 academically competent high school ESL learners of differing age on arrival (AOA) who received instructed ESL support and one comparison group of six young arrivals who received little if any ESL support during their educational experiences. Although intake and…

This study systematically examines the strength of the connection between synchronous CMC and pragmatic instruction by measuring the effects of three types of synchronous group discussion (written chat [WC], oral chat [OC], and traditional face-to-face [FF] discussion) on the acquisition of the speech act (refusals of an invitation) in the target…

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies have begun to play an increasingly important role in the teaching of foreign/second (L2) languages. Its use in this context is supported by a growing body of CMC research that highlights the importance of the negotiation of meaning and computer-based interaction in the process of second language…

The articulatory awareness task, which was found by Griffiths and Frith (2002) to discriminate ex-dyslexic from non-dyslexic adults, was given to three groups of Japanese college students with different English reading abilities. Two unexpected results emerged: (1) Articulatory awareness performance was generally poor across the groups, thereby…

It is generally accepted that dyslexia should be identified early for interventions to have maximum effect. However, when children speak English as an additional language (EAL), diagnosis is more complex and there is concern that these children tend to be under-identified. This paper reports a longitudinal study following the development of…

Many simultaneous bilinguals exhibit loss or incomplete acquisition of their heritage language under conditions of exposure and use of the majority language (Silva-Corvalan, 1994, 2003; Polinsky, 1997; Toribio, 2001; Montrul, 2002). Recent work within discourse-functional (Silva-Corvalan 1994) and generative perspectives (Sorace, 2000; Montrul;…

This article draws on second language theory, particularly output theory as defined by Swain (1995), in order to conceptualise observations made in a computer-assisted language learning setting. It investigates second language output and learner behaviour within an electronic role-play setting, based on a subject-specific problem solving task and…