The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of Spanish literacy precursor skills on reading learning to read in the mother tongue and their degree of transfer to English. A quasi-experimental design was used, which allowed for a repeated measures comparison between two groups of students, who underwent a follow-up assessment one year…

The present study firstly assesses how students can develop and improve the skills of listening and reading through personalized feedback. Secondly, it evaluates the motivational effects of the use of Audience Response Systems (ARS) in English lessons in comparison with the lessons where these electronic devices are not used. In three sessions, 68…

This study investigates the provision of two types of auditory elaborative automated digital feedback (metalinguistic and informational) in the context of a digital game for reading skills development in English as a foreign language. Nineteen 11-year-old Spanish-Catalan school children played through two digital minigames while their…

In recent decades there has been great interest in the study of dyslexia and the difficulties that students with dyslexia presented in reading. The result of the various studies have found dyslexia as a complex disorder with a multifactorial genesis in the predominantly phonological difficulties, neuropsychological and other learning, among which…

The connections between music and language are still to be clarified in educational terms; despite the great deal of literature on the common mechanisms underlying their working in learning, memory, and some other related factors, there is not robust research on their combined potential. Educational bilingualism and musical instruction have been…

This book provides a holistic overview of what leads to success in foreign language learning at an early age and deepens our understanding of early foreign language learning. The studies use an array of methodological approaches to research learners aged between three and ten, as well as their parents and teachers, in instructional, minimal-input…

The aim of this paper is to provide new evidence on the effectiveness of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in the acquisition of English language competences (reading, writing, listening and spoken production and interaction) compared to traditional learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) in primary school settings. To do so,…

This study focuses on the degree of influence of one individual factor, namely gender, on the level of English competence attained in two different groups of intermediate-level Catalan Spanish adolescent learners of English as a foreign language: the first group (Group A) is 1 year younger and follows formal instruction (FI) and in parallel…

The present study explored data from a survey of students' performance in English at the end of compulsory school in 6 European countries. The aim was to gain deeper knowledge of the internal structure of the test and to discuss similarities and differences between the different settings regarding patterns in language proficiency. The analyses,…

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a multifaceted educational approach which has emerged as a major innovation in improving language learning and subject learning in the curriculum. In order to analyse the effect of this approach, a number of studies (Dalton Puffer, C., T. Nikula and U. Smit, eds. 2010. "Language Use and…

This article deals with university language teaching in the perspective of its shift from linguistic competence towards communicative competence, and presents some aspects of the underlying process. It analyses the findings from a survey conducted within the Leonardo project "Transparency in the Acquired Language Competences" (TALC;…

In a world in which online reading is becoming increasingly common and, as a consequence, online literacy more and more necessary, this paper focuses on possibility of training L2 (second language) readers to bridge the gap between paper reading and online reading. Many researchers believe metacognitive awareness to be the most important ability…

The project Early Language Learning in Europe (ELLiE) has studied the longitudinal effects of an early foreign language (FL) start in seven European contexts. This article presents a sub-study of ELLiE that investigates the impact of out-of-school factors on learners' listening and reading skills in year four of formal FL instruction. More…

The aim of this work is to analyse how Spanish readers react to English discourse markers in a text. We carry out an empirical study in which we ask three research question: (a) if there is any relationship between presence of discourse markers or absence of discourse markers and reading comprehension in English as a foreign language, (b) if there…

This paper describes the theoretical framework and the main objectives of the European Comenius project MuViT -- Multiliteracy Virtual. The project engages primary pupils across the world in multilingual and audiovisual reading and writing processes through the use of information technology resources to enhance multi-literacies, plurilingual…