In order to teach a language effectively, teachers need to be both proficient users of the target language, and have an explicit understanding of its linguistic structures. This study reports on the linguistic knowledge of Irish of a group of student primary teachers (SPTs) (N = 75) preparing to teach in primary schools in the Republic of Ireland.…

Purpose: Both monolingual and bilingual children use learning constraints and heuristics to acquire new words from their environment. Overall, fast mapping abilities seem to be similar in both populations, but monolinguals rely more than bilinguals on the mutual exclusivity strategy. Our study probes the robustness of these results in a large…

Background: One way of evaluating immigrants' labor market outcomes is to assess the extent to which immigrants are able to enter into jobs that are commensurate with their education and experience. An imperfect alignment between workers' educational qualifications and these required for their current job, or education-job mismatch, has…

The ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview--computer (OPIc) employs a self-assessment instrument to determine the nature of the speaking prompts to which the test taker will respond and, thus the difficulty of the test. Grounded in research demonstrating varying levels of accuracy in self-assessment among language learners, this study examines the…

In the field of second language assessment, there is limited empirical research on the alignment of different language proficiency standards. This study aims to establish level correspondences for overall language proficiency between China's Standards of English Language Ability (CSE) and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages…

This article offers new insights into our understanding of the formation, textual mediation, and reproduction of perceptions of children's 'school readiness' in kindergarten and its consequences for teachers' assessment of minority-language children's 'readiness'. Building on Danish Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) teachers' accounts of…

The Indiana Department of Education's (IDOE's) "Accessibility and Accommodations Information for Statewide Assessments" is intended for school-level personnel and decision-making teams as they prepare for and implement Indiana state assessments. Information is provided for school personnel as a reference to inform school personnel about…

"Proficiency-Based Instruction: Input & Interaction in World Language Education" will equip teachers of any language and of any level with specific, practical, and straightforward tools to bring input and interaction to life in the classroom. Teaching for proficiency is fun and engaging for both students and their teachers, and the…

The first part of this dissertation conducts a large-scale study comparing general and usage-based indices of syntactic complexity in L2 Mandarin writing samples across a wide range of proficiency levels. To do this, the Tool for the Automated Analysis of Syntactic Sophistication and Complexity (TAASSC; Kyle, 2016) was adapted for Mandarin by…

An important subgroup of English learner-classified (EL) students immigrate to the U.S., entering U.S. schools upon their arrival. Using growth models and statewide data, this study describes the incoming English proficiency and subsequent English language growth of newcomer students, including the student, program, and school characteristics that…

At all educational levels, the number of English learners continues to increase; their academic and linguistic success are growing concerns. The problem is that middle school English learners struggle to reach English proficiency in literacy and language. Closing the achievement gap is a challenge for both English learners and middle school…

Despite the growing body of technology-assisted vocabulary intervention studies, few have addressed learning outcomes beyond target vocabulary and the interaction between the interventions and English language learners' (ELLs) initially different levels of vocabulary knowledge. The study examined the differential effects of a texting-based…

Although language assessments for medical professionals in the UK are changing, there is still a need for them to demonstrate their proficiency in English before working in the National Health Service (NHS). When providing English for specific purposes (ESP) courses for retraining refugee doctors, we need to consider all the potential barriers…

Purpose: This article explores the interrelationship between second-language students' literacy development and civics learning in studies focusing on L2 students' civics learning. Design/methodology/approach: The conceptual framework and the analytical tool in this thematic literature review consists of a four-field model in which the four key…

Building up on studies that have revealed L2 transfer of imperfective meaning from one Romance language into another [Salaberry, M. R. (2005). Evidence for transfer of knowledge of aspect from L2 Spanish to L3 Portuguese. In D. Ayoun & R. Salaberry (Eds.), "Tense and aspect in romance languages: Theoretical and applied perspectives"…