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…

This article discusses some of the challenges that researchers working in the fields of bilingualism and second-language acquisition (SLA) and in the field of language testing face in developing comparable and culturally and cognitively appropriate data collection and language assessment tools for bilingual children from rural minority-language…

In this essay, five researchers, who are also English educators, describe the research they have crafted to improve the quality of classroom literacy education. They begin by describing their common perspective afforded by linguistics, discourse analysis and related social theory. Their framework and studies describe their action-oriented…

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…

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…

The paper examines two types of texts, personal experience narratives and expository discussions, dealing with the shared theme of interpersonal conflict. Both were produced by the same 80 subjects, participants in a crosslinguistic study on developing literacy: gradeschoolers aged 9;0 to 10;0, twelve-to-thirteen-year-old junior high school…

The present study evaluates the relative effectiveness of two types of input-based instruction, consciousness-raising instruction (the consciousness-raising task only) and consciousness-raising instruction with feedback (the consciousness-raising task + reactive explicit feedback) for teaching English polite requestive forms, involving 45 Japanese…

Literary hypertext has often been acknowledged as the embodiment of poststructuralist literary theory (e.g. Coover, 1992; Landow, 1997; Bolter, 2001). The only literary medium that is produced, edited, published and received electronically, it encourages readings that defy the conventionally linear decoding process. With respect to text…

This paper reports the findings of a study that examined changes in interns' culturally and family-responsive dispositions over the course of a 2-year early childhood teacher preparation program that prepares teachers who are willing and able to work with culturally, linguistically, and ability-diverse young children and their families.…

A bilingual model has been applied to educating deaf students who are learning American Sign Language (ASL) as their first language and written English as a second. Although Cummins's (1984) theory of second language learning articulates how learners draw on one language to acquire another, implementing teaching practices based on this theory,…

"Dimension" is the annual volume containing the selected, refereed, edited Proceedings of each year's conference. "From Practice to Profession" was the announced theme of the annual conference of the Southern Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT), held March 1-3, 2007, at the Atlanta (GA) Renaissance Hotel, in partnership…

This study investigated the accuracy order of English relative clauses in the usage of 199 Japanese high school students of English as a foreign language (EFL). Specifically, it looked at: (1) whether the Accessibility Hierarchy conform to the accuracy order by Japanese senior high school students of EFL; and (2) how frequently this population…

A study was undertaken to assess the adequacy of current Master's and doctoral English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) and applied linguistics program curricula in preparing administrators acquainted with administrative theories. Secondary objectives were to determine the appropriateness of such programs in preparing students for teaching, research,…

This monograph contains papers on research work in progress at the Department of Applied Linguistics and Institute for Applied Language Studies at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). Topics addressed include general English teaching, English for Academic Purposes teaching, Modern Language teaching, and teacher education. Papers are:…

This study investigated the utility and feasibility of administering achievement tests to adults in a continuing education course in French, in Scotland, in which student progress is not usually formal assessed. Subjects were 18 adults in elementary-level classes, aged 18 to over 60 years. Students were tested three times, at 3-4 week intervals,…