This study attempts to determine which factors students find most influential in their oral participation in a foreign language class and their thoughts on what actions the teacher should take to encourage more oral participation in class. Participants were 38 students in Spanish 1 and 2 at a rural middle school and high school. Students completed…

Having orally proficient Spanish speaking heritage learners in a class alongside monolingual English speakers who are learning Spanish as a second language is quite the challenge: the heritage learners' ability to converse can be intimidating to the non heritage learner, but at the same time, the non heritage learner's ability to grasp the grammar…

Orally and later in written form, stories have been used to identify and reinforce the values of a culture. The parables of the Bible and the vocalization of articulate animals in Aesop fables continue to be used to teach morals to children. While the majority of existing research investigates the effective use of animals as a tool in character…

Purpose: To demonstrate that early childhood speech sound disorders (SSD) and later school-age reading, written expression, and spelling skills are influenced by shared endophenotypes that may be in part genetic. Method: Children with SSD and their siblings were assessed at early childhood (ages 4-6 years) and followed at school age (7-12 years).…

Early childhood and special educators are under growing demands to develop children's language and literacy skills through evidence-based practices. One promising research-based strategy for vocabulary and language development is dialogic reading (DR), which is an interactive picture book reading technique developed in the late 1980's by…

This study reports on the integration of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) multimedia courseware for oral presentations into a self-learning and elective program for non-English major students in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) setting. A computer-aided instruction approach, combined with a task-based learning approach, was adopted.…

It is argued that tasks with different structures yield different performances in terms of accuracy, fluency and complexity. The present study is thus an attempt to investigate the impact of task structure on second language task performance. Thirty two upper-intermediate Iranian learners of English performed two narrative tasks (Structured vs.…

This article reports on a study conducted at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in the foreign language extension courses. The author shows how young learners who study English in this program can develop their oral production by making and listening to music. The study took place in the first semester of 2009 and followed the qualitative and…

This study explores the effects of short-term Spanish study in study abroad (SA) and at home (AH) contexts on oral fluency and Willingness to Communicate (WTC). Following the Input and Interaction Hypothesis and the Output Hypothesis, it is hypothesized that learners from short-term SA programs will demonstrate larger gains in fluency and WTC due…

Webquests have been used for some time to research a variety of topics. According to Lacina (2007), a webquest is an inquiry-based technology activity designed by Bernie Dodge and Tom March in which information is usually drawn from the Internet, and is a powerful instructional exercise both for teachers and students.Webquests enhance personal and…

This dissertation follows an oral language assessment tool from initial design and implementation to validity analysis. The specialized variables of this study are the population: international teaching assistants and the purpose: spoken assessment as a hiring prerequisite. However, the process can easily be applied to other populations and…

The purpose of this study was to examine ethnic and gender differences in using DISCOVER, a performance-based assessment, for identifying gifted students. The sample consisted of 941 students from grades K-5 belonging to six ethnicities: White Americans, African-Americans, Hispanics, Native-Americans, South Pacific/Pacific Islanders, and Arabs.…

This study aims to highlight aspects of difficulty encountered by Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners and to explore the factors underlying these aspects. Data were gathered through a Chinese Language Learning Difficulty Survey from 164 CFL learners, mostly in British higher education. The survey data provided useful exploratory findings.…

Many adolescent and adult L2 learners in language classrooms, both in the US and other countries, have little or no alphabetic print literacy. Language teachers may turn to SLA research for assistance, yet almost all research on oral SLA has focused on educated, highly-literate learners (Bigelow & Tarone 2004; Tarone, Bigelow & Hansen 2009). The…

With the new approach to guide the learning process of students with a model based on the development of competences, and in comparison with the traditional lecture-based learning, it is necessary to start working with the teaching modalities that help to achieve this objective. With that in mind, the aim of the study reported in this article was…