Numerous studies on reading comprehension with monolingual children have shown that oral language, such as vocabulary, is an important factor in predicting reading comprehension success. However, few studies have looked at the reading comprehension performance of bilinguals, and less is known about the contributors to its success, linguistic or…

Academic English has drawn criticism for its hegemonic status, and its dominance and legitimization as an "appropriate" language variety within academic and mainstream discourse communities have been problematized for stigmatizing home languages and dialects of multilingual and multidialectal students. However, students' proficiency in…

Many parents in the UK enrol their children in Greek supplementary schools so the children can learn and maintain the Greek language and culture in parallel with English mainstream education. Despite fears about the effects of this heritage language (Greek) use on children's skills in the majority language (English), research on these somewhat…

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique learning experience, characterised by school closures and a shift to online learning. Research suggests that online learning during the pandemic negatively impacted the reading development of elementary school children. However, little is known about the challenges of learning a second language…

This cohort-sequential study explored the working memory (WM) structures that underlie growth in mathematical word problem solving (WPS) performance in elementary school emergent bilingual children whose first language (L1) is Spanish. To this end, children (N = 429) in Grades 1, 2, and 3 in southwest U.S. school districts at Wave 1 were…

This study examined the role of parents' early home language use in the English reading development of emergent bilinguals (N = 3,058) and how their relations are moderated by children's oral English language proficiency using longitudinal data from kindergarten to eighth grade (ages 6-15 years). Results from multi-group latent basis growth models…

Resolution to ambiguity imposed by English relative clauses (RC) was examined with Thai EFL students in this study. Offline experimental items included two-site context NPs, i.e., NP1 "of" NP2 (Complex NP of) and NP1 "with" NP2 (Complex NP "with") modified by RCs. As NP1 and NP2 occupy higher and lower positions in…

This study examined the contribution of three writing enabling skills (i.e., feedback perception, self-efficacy, and self-regulation) on writing performance among Hispanic students. Participants were 261 students in grades 3-5. Approximately 60% of students were Emerging Bilingual (EB) enrolled in dual language programming. Students completed…

The problem is that while the number of Multilingual learners (MLs) in Maryland has drastically increased, there are not enough English language development (ELD) teachers certified or prepared to deliver effective instruction. A gap in the research exists because English Language Development (ELD) teachers seldom feel prepared to meet the…

Background: Gaps between dual language learners (DLLs) and monolingual English-speaking children have been reported at kindergarten entry, and many DLL children are classified as long-term English learners, having less access to the general curriculum in the upper grades (NASEM, 2017). The supposed underperformance of DLLs might be due to the…

The current work investigates whether language dominance predicts transfer of skills across cognitive-linguistic levels from the native language (Spanish) to the second language (English) in bilingual preschoolers. Sensitivity to cognates ("elephant/elefante" in English/Spanish) and metalinguistic awareness (MLA) have both been shown to…

This study sets out to explore the effect of proficiency and modality of interaction on code-switching (CS) amongst two groups of Spanish-Catalan learners acquiring English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Primary school (grade 3, n = 24 and grade 6, n = 21). Data was retrieved from audio-taped oral activities (peer interaction and learner-teacher…

Previous studies on the academic achievement (AA) of students who pursue education in English-medium instruction settings indicate that standardised international language tests demonstrate low predictive power for study success. Consequently, there seems to be clear value in exploring alternative means of determining influential correlators…

This qualitative case study of a high school world language (WL) classroom with flexible language boundaries (Cummins, 2012; Creese & Blackledge, 2010; Garcia & Li Wei, 2014; Turnbull & Daily-O'Cain, 2009) examines how proficient L1 readers constructed meaning from authentic L2 text as emerging bilinguals. Grounded in sociocognitive…

We explore the classification accuracy of a parent and teacher report measure, the Inventory to Assess Language Knowledge (ITALK), to screen for developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilingual children. Participants were 120 Spanish-English bilingual children with typical development (TD) and 19 bilingual children with DLD, ranging in age from…