This is a qualitative case study framed by a sociosemiotic theoretical framework to explore science and language instruction with three Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) in sixth grade. The study details the modeling and explanatory processes used by EBs to mediate science learning through evidence-based argumentation. A thematic analysis of students'…

The present study investigated the effect of emotional valence on auditory word recognition memory in English as a foreign language. Participants included 48 native Spanish speakers whose foreign language was English. They viewed four emotionally negative, four positive, and four neutral videos that, in total, contained 48 emotionally valenced…

In 1996, Ernest L. Boyer's "The Scholarship of Engagement" ignited a national conversation with its call for greater dialectical exchange between "academic and civic cultures." In 2001, Washington and Lee University (W&L) Professor Ellen Mayock founded the student organization English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL),…

The present study draws on earlier research on learner-learner dyadic interactions in an e-tandem virtual exchange and examines negotiation of meaning episodes based on the qualitative data. These data come from learner-learner interactions during oral tasks carried out using a video conferencing tool. The aim is to unveil the interactional…

The present dissertation brings together research on heritage language acquisition and bilingual education and makes inroads into the limited research on heritage language development in school-aged bilingual children. This study explores how bilingual education, patterns of exposure, and lexical frequency shape adolescent Spanish heritage…

As Spanish heritage language (SHL) programs grow nationwide, SHL program directors (PD) are tasked with negotiating the intricacies of either building an SHL program from scratch or carving space for a program that, unlike second language (L2) programs, are not institutionalised. Considering the evidence of deeply embedded dominant language…

The English Resultative Construction (ERC) is a satellite-framed structure with no identical equivalent in Spanish. In a series of studies, we analyzed and compared recognition (acceptability judgment task) and comprehension (sentence comprehension task) of three ERC subtypes with the English Depictive Construction (EDC) (which has a Spanish…

In recent years, the number of Mexican youth moving (back) to Mexico from the US has been steadily growing (Sanchez Garcia & Hamann, 2016; Jensen & Jacobo-Suarez, 2019). The Pew Research Center for Hispanic Studies estimates that between 2009 and 2014, roughly 1 million Mexicans and their families moved from the US to Mexico…

The study addresses the research gap of how being a speaker of a Slavic language influences the ability to convey tempo-aspectual meanings in Romance languages by examining personal and impersonal narratives delivered in written and spoken mode by learners of L3 Spanish and L3 Italian with L1 Slovak and L2 English. Narratives are analysed…

Studies on the application of service-learning with an emphasis on heritage learners are still emerging. Using a critical service-learning approach, I describe how the integration of a service-learning project showed heritage learners of Spanish the need for people with their bilingual abilities. Specifically, I examine the impact of…

Many children learn language, in part, from the speech of non-native speakers who vary in their language proficiency. To investigate the influence of speaker proficiency on the quality of child-directed speech, 29 mothers who were native English speakers and 31 mothers who were native speakers of Spanish and who reported speaking English to their…

The study compares the uses of the native-speaker concept as a legitimizing resource in language-standard ideologies and normative discourse in five languages of European origin. Much research and international discussion has focused on the native speaker of English, a symbolically international language. We aim to show how the native-speaker…

Existing research on second language (L2) pronoun resolution has not yet looked at immediate and cumulative priming effects. By using a sentence comprehension task, the present study aims at priming dis-preferred interpretations for ambiguous pronouns. We test a group of native speakers and a group of intermediate-proficiency L2 learners of…

Bilinguals recognize words with shared morphology and phonology cross-linguistically (i.e., cognates) faster than words that do not have these characteristics. Moreover, higher phonological overlap in cognates enhances the effects, which suggests that phonology eases word recognition. However, it is currently unclear whether words compete purely…

The Spanish subjunctive mood (SUBJ) is said to be highly vulnerable in heritage language (HL) acquisition. However, there is little controlled research on HL-speaking children acquiring the various Spanish SUBJ contexts, so we do not have a clear picture of when, how, or why heritage speakers (HSs) develop in the SUBJ as they do. This study tests…