Five cohorts of students (N = 322) who completed a K-5 Spanish Dual Language Immersion (DLI) program in an urban school district were followed longitudinally through middle and high school completion. Academic and language achievement data included English Language Arts and Mathematics scores on the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) test…

Research on Spanish heritage language (SHL) education has grown exponentially in the last two decades. The most recent nationwide study on SHL programs in US postsecondary institutions was conducted a decade ago. To continue this line of research, the primary aim of this study is to provide an update about the current state of SHL course offerings…

Seven cohorts of students (N = 258) who completed a K-5 Spanish Immersion (SI) program in a suburban California school district were followed longitudinally through middle and high school to understand their academic, language, and social emotional outcomes. Academic and language outcomes included Spanish classes and grades, standardized Math and…

Students who participate in advanced coursework in high school are more likely to enroll and persist in college. This study measured college readiness indicators of high school seniors enrolled in the Utah Spanish Bridge Program and analyzed whether performance differed based on race/ethnicity or on parent college completion. Findings show that…

Research has demonstrated that students in dual-language immersion programs perform as well as, or better than, their peers in core academic content areas by late elementary school. However, the extent to which immersion education fosters bilingualism has received less attention in the literature. Using data from a four-year efficacy study of…

Within foreign language classrooms, one intervention gaining recognition is LinguaFolio, a portfolio-based formative assessment designed to increase self-regulated learning. The question emerges whether such an intervention impacts student motivation, learning, and achievement. Researchers conducted a classroom-based, quasi-experimental,…

Research suggests that second/foreign language teachers' sense of humor is directly related to many outcomes for teachers and their students. This research investigates the relationship between the perceived sense of humor of in-service Spanish teachers' (n?=?102) and their students' (n?=?5,419) score on the National Spanish Exams…

This study investigated the differences in levels of achievement when learning the preterite and imperfect aspects in Spanish, at the recognition and production levels, between students who used instruction with video/photo blogs and wikis, compared to those who used instruction with traditional text-based technologies. Results revealed that there…

This article investigates the effects of language anxiety on course achievement in three foreign language proficiency levels of Spanish, namely, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Participants completed the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986) and a background questionnaire. Results showed that language…

A classroom experiment involving 79 first-semester Spanish students measured the relationship between foreign language vocabulary visual aids, vocabulary achievement scores, and student modality strengths. Results suggest a need for further research for devising the best combination of visual aids, particularly for predominantly visual or auditory…

Investigates the effect of learning strategies on writing achievement in an intermediate-advanced college-level Spanish writing course and examines the influence of the students' native language and textbook on these strategies. Subjects were a class of 20 students that comprised nine first language and 11 foreign/second language speakers. The…

Describes a 2.5 year study on the achievement and attrition ate differences between a beginning university-level Spanish course delivered in the classroom and the same course taught over the Internet. Results are discussed. (Author/VWL)

Reviews research findings of studies dealing with distance-education programs; describes the results of a distance-learning study implemented with secondary school students learning Spanish; and identifies questions that must be addressed as the foreign-language profession attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of distance learning in current…

Bilingual Latino high school students who studied Spanish as an academic subject demonstrated a heightened awareness of how to use their two languages as complementary resources in school and professional settings. A case study traces one student's literacy development in Spanish over 4 years and her ability to use it as a resource in her…

Compares the use of a print and multimedia program to teach Spanish to second through fifth graders from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Showed that achievement and proficiency of students using print or multimedia materials did not differ at posttest. A small but statistically significant difference in achievement emerged at the…