The present study explores young learners' awareness of foreign language learning and of their learning conditions. The participants were 76 Catalan-Spanish children who were learning English at primary school. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal data were collected by means of two different interviews that contained questions related to pupils'…

This paper describes a project, including the design, development, and use of a mobile application (referred to as application hereafter) for learning Chinese as a second language in a bilingual primary school. The application was designed for iPod Touch Apple technology with the purpose to facilitate learning of a fundamental set of 200 Chinese…

The study explored the invariance of Filipino and English versions of the Inventory of School Motivation (ISM) for Filipino-English bilingual students. There was invariance in the factor structure and factor loadings across the two language versions. Between-network construct validation showed consistent associations between ISM-mastery goals and…

Latino bilingual children hold rich understandings, which are underexplored and underutilized in the geoscience classroom. Oftentimes, young Latinos possess unique cultural land experiences shaping their place identities. We consider science as language and culture, and propose place-based geoscience hybrid space explorations that are culturally…

For 5 years, this research team has sought to learn from more than 700 students encountered in Mexican schools, who had previous experience attending schools in the United States. Although this study has used mixed methods, 1 tool--the written survey--has proven particularly valuable as a means to build profiles of such transnational students.…

This study focuses, from a bilingual perspective, on how a Swedish national test is intended to promote critical literacy and language development in line with related aims in syllabuses for Swedish and Swedish as a second language. The material consists of reading and writing assignments and prescribed classroom preparations (including…

This paper reports a pilot study on the development and validation of the bilingual (Chinese and English) "Motivation and Attitudes for Language Learning Inventory" (MALLI). MALLI is designed to measure secondary school students' learning motivations, and several other factors in the learning of both Chinese and English languages. We…

Yingjiang is a frontier county in southwest Yunnan, China, with distinctive ethnic and cultural diversity. Bilingual education (BE) has been a prominent feature in Yingjiang since the 1950s due to supportive policies and measures at various levels. BE in Yingjiang developed so well in the 1980s that a bilingual school was awarded the title of…

For young bilingual students a feeling of connection to their background languages and cultures forms one important aspect of their developing identities. This paper addresses some of the findings from a larger study examining students' understandings of their identities as bilingual. The study involved students who are part of a bilingual program…

One hundred four Hong Kong Chinese fifth graders completed a questionnaire on eight separate motivational subscales related to reading separately for Chinese as a first language (L1) and English as a foreign language (EFL) in addition to measures of both Chinese and English reading comprehension. Motivations related to self-efficacy, curiosity,…

This paper reports on pedagogies that promote language, content and literacy in English by stimulating learners' creativity. The starting point to promote creativity among learners was music and art. There seems to be a natural connection between music, language and thinking which suggests that incorporating musical experiences into daily…

Background: University Entrance Examinations provide information the student's opportunities to succeed in their academic university career. However, the current foreign language paper of the Spanish University Entrance Examination does no permit to obtain enough evidence to make academic inferences. Purpose of Study: The purpose of this study was…

What are the longitudinal cognitive profiles of Hong Kong Chinese children with specific reading difficulties in Chinese only, in English only, or both? A total of 16 poor readers each of Chinese (PC) and English (PE) and 8 poor readers of both orthographies (PB) were compared to a control sample (C) of 16 children; all were drawn from a…

Very little research has been conducted into teaching advanced learners of German as a foreign language (GFL), and the few publications that exist describe such learners as very heterogeneous in respect of their learning needs, motivations, prior knowledge and expectations. Not surprisingly, didactic suggestions for teaching GFL at an advanced…

Many think of intervention strategies in terms of literacy or mathematics, but the author believes such strategies are just as important in teaching science, particularly for those with English as an additional language (EAL). With the recent focus in England on inclusion, achievement for all, and the Government's personalisation agenda, it is…