This is a research report on children's use of multiple languages and the school curriculum. The study explored factors that trigger use of, and fluency in, multiple languages; and how fluency in multiple languages relates to thought processes and school performance. Advantages and disadvantages of using only one of the languages spoken were…

This article is derived from a small study conducted within a larger qualitative study into the nature of the responses of mainstream primary teachers in a non-metropolitan area in Australia to the Sudanese refugee English Language Learners (ELLs) in their classes. It reports on findings in relation to teachers' attitudes toward the use of their…

To date, most studies about English language learners (ELLs) in Structured English Immersion (SEI) classrooms in the state of Arizona have focused on ELLs' lack of English acquisition in one year, a time frame expected by Arizona policymakers, as well as their lagging academic progress. While these studies almost uniformly have surfaced…

There has been an increasing interest in and hence a growing number of research studies on content and language integrated learning (CLIL) over the past two decades. One of the on-going debates in CLIL is on bilingualism versus monolingualism, or the role of the first language (L1) in subject teaching. So far, very few research projects have been…

The study examined differences in reading achievement and mastery skill development among Grade-6 students with different language background profiles, using cognitive diagnosis modeling applied to large-scale provincial reading test performance data. Our analyses revealed that students residing in various home language environments show different…

This article discusses the implications of "multicompetence" (Cook, 1991), defined as an individual's knowledge of more than one language, for language assessment. The growing psycholinguistic evidence highlighting variability in native speaker performance as a result of multicompetence is reviewed, evidence that further questions the validity of…

We report the results of two studies that investigate the factors contributing to non-native-like ability in child and adult heritage speakers by focusing on oral production of Differential Object Marking (DOM), the overt morphological marking of animate direct objects in Spanish. In study 1, 39 school-age bilingual children (ages 6-17) from the…

In bilingual language processing, the parallel activation hypothesis suggests that bilinguals activate their two languages simultaneously during language processing. Support for the parallel activation mainly comes from studies of lexical (word-form) processing, with relatively less attention to phonological (sound) processing. According to…

Could a second language (L2) influence how bilinguals process their native language (L1)? The work described in this dissertation examined this issue focusing on the way bilinguals interpret the meanings of words. Capitalizing on the prevalence of words that can be translated in more than one way across languages (i.e., "translation ambiguity,"…

In this article, we outline the differences between a monolingual and multilingual orientation to language and language acquisition. The increasing contact between languages in the context of globalization motivates such a shift of paradigms. Multilingual communicative practices have remained vibrant in non-western communities for a long time. We…

Within the context of a monocultural and monolingual education system, this paper seeks to explore and compare the experiences of Cypriot and non-Cypriot pupils in Greek-Cypriot primary schools with culturally diverse pupil populations. The concept of multiculturalism has been introduced only very recently in Cyprus and there has been little…

This study describes the language proficiency and early literacy skills of Cantonese-speaking English language learners (ELLs) in kindergarten. A total of 113 Cantonese-speaking kindergarteners in Canada and the United States, composed of three subsamples from three different locations participated in this study. Results showed that on average,…

In content and language integrated learning (CLIL), as in any other type of bilingual education, two languages are used to promote cognitive and language learning. Whereas in the bilingual classroom the two languages are always present, in CLIL they may appear together or be used in totally separate circumstances. Although the relationship between…

The current scientific assessment policies in contemporary Spain increasingly push junior and senior researchers of the Spanish academia to the "global" knowledge production model based on highly specific and monolingual academic works. This turn towards a "Journal Citation Reports"--English written articles mode of knowledge…

Novel word learning in the context of shared storybook reading has been primarily investigated with monolingual children, while experiments with Hispanic dual language learners (DLLs) are less prevalent. This exploratory study investigated the extratextual stylistic behaviors of storybook reading that promote novel word learning in DLL…