The Cultural Heritage Bilingual Program (CHBP) was developed for English Language Learner (ELL) students from language groups not served by current bilingual programs in the Houston Independent School District (HISD). The two main bilingual programs in the district (Transitional Bilingual and Dual Language Bilingual) are designed to serve ELLs…

Rating scales have been used as a major assessment instrument to measure language performance on oral tasks. The present research concerned, under the same rating criteria, how far teachers interpreted students' speaking scores by using two different types of rating method, and how far students could benefit from the feedback of the description of…

This paper discusses the pedagogical implications of Dynamic Systems Theory approaches to second language development. The main question addressed is whether it is possible to describe a learner's level of proficiency with a simple and unambiguous label, and if so, whether the CEFR can provide such a label. It is argued that considering the…

This study aimed to determine the degree of metaphorical meaning acquisition reflected in the ratings of Mental Lexicon Organizations (MLOs) namely subordinate, compound and coordinate; and to explore the interaction effects of the self-regulating capacities and age on the ratings. The method is quantitative. 261 out of 1,278 students of English,…

This paper reports the verification of the consequential validity of a Diagnostic College English Speaking Test. A case study was conducted with 28 sophomore students from a national key university in China engaged in seven sets of DCEST tests. The analysis of the DCEST scores of the students in the experiment group indicates that progress has…

It is generally believed that interlanguage pragmatics and motivation play important roles in learning. Motivation is important because it determines the extent of the learner's active involvement and attitude toward learning. The major purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of integrative and instrumental motivation on the…

This study was conducted to investigate the influence of Colloquial Jordanian Arabic upon the use of negation and the definite article in English. The sample of the study consisted of 100 male and 100 female Jordanian 10th graders in the academic year 2011-2012. The students were randomly selected from public schools in the region of Karak-Jordan.…

This paper evaluates the effect of differing amounts of schooling on outcomes of lower secondary education. Two groups of German academic track students are compared who chose English as either their first (EFFL; "n" = 2,771) or second (ESFL; "n" = 345) foreign language throughout secondary school. While EFFL students receive…

Bengali or Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language. It is the state language of West Bengal and Tripura and also spoken in some parts of Assam. Bangla is the official language of Bangladesh. With nearly 230 million speakers (Wikipedia 2010), Bangla is one of the most spoken language in the world. Bangla language is the most commonly used language in West…

The increasingly diverse language backgrounds of their students are creating new challenges for English-medium universities. One response in Australian and New Zealand institutions has been to introduce post-entry language assessment (PELA) to identify incoming students who need to enhance their academic language ability. One successful example of…

This study explores the potential for automated indices related to speech delivery, language use, and topic development to model human judgments of TOEFL speaking proficiency in second language (L2) speech samples. For this study, 244 transcribed TOEFL speech samples taken from 244 L2 learners were analyzed using automated indices taken from…

In this project report, the authors describe the five transformations that a primary school in Singapore underwent as it adopted an inquiry pedagogy and curriculum along with a 1:1 deployment of smartphones. Based on the students' end-of-year test scores, not only did the students learn the prescribed content, but also they developed key 21st…

This study investigates cognitive and metacognitive strategies in learning oral Arabic among students at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia. The concept of these strategies was derived from the self-regulated learning framework, which consists of five components, namely rehearsal, elaboration, organization, critical thinking, and…

Few classroom measures of English language proficiency have been evaluated for reliability and validity. This research examined the concurrent and predictive validity of an oral language test, titled A Developmental English Language Proficiency Test (ADEPT), and the relationship to the California English Language Development Test (CELDT) in the…

This is the 2012-2013 annual report on the academic progress of English language learners in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. The purpose of the report is to: (1) Describe the demographic characteristics of students classified as English Language Learners (ELL) in Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS); (2) Provide data regarding ELL students'…