GLASPORT first convened in October 2009 with funding provided by a Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant. The grant proposal was submitted by then Glastonbury Assistant Superintendent of Schools (and former Foreign Language Director) Christine Brown. The committee was charged with two ambitious objectives: (1) to aid in the development…

This article reports on a longitudinal inquiry into mainland Chinese students' language learning experiences with a focus on their efforts to improve their English competence in a leading English medium University in Hong Kong. The inquiry problematizes an uncritical assumption of a shared pursuit of linguistic competence among different students…

This article reports on an extensive survey administered to advanced heritage language (HL) learners to examine their language behaviors, attitudes, and backgrounds. To date, there have been no detailed categorizations of advanced HL learners to guide classroom instruction and curriculum design. Thus the present study is a first attempt to fill…

This paper presents a series of experiments that tested the usefulness of teaching Spanish mood using an approach to Cognitive Grammar specifically developed for the foreign language classroom: "Operational Grammar." Mood selection is one of the most difficult aspects of learning Spanish as a FL, and it is one of the last features…

Web based writing platforms allowing for exchanges across the world are increasingly being used in education. These recent forms of textual practice are highly related to conditions offered by the technology, allowing users, who previously were primarily consumers, to become producers of text. This chapter investigates student interaction over a…

Although the Word Associates Format (WAF) is becoming more frequently used as a depth-of-knowledge measure, relatively little validation has been carried out on it. This report of two validation studies tackles various important WAF issues yet to be satisfactorily resolved. Study 1 conducted introspective interviews regarding students' WAF…

This dissertation examines the effects of service learning experiences on participants' attitudes towards the Spanish language and culture and their language proficiency. It was hypothesized that using the Spanish language outside the confines of the academic environment would affect participants' attitudes and have an impact on their language…

In this article, the author investigates the experience of six preservice teachers who volunteered to work with English language learners (ELLs). For this project, the preservice teachers would meet with their students to conduct one-on-one interviews about their reading and writing, hold conferences with them, and share their own writing as well.…

Although much attention has been given in recent literature to the teaching of Spanish as a heritage language (HL), few studies have been published on specific Spanish HL programs, especially in states such as Utah that have only recently seen a large increase in the number of heritage students of Spanish. This study reports the results of a…

The academic literature and educational principle suggest that native and non-native English speaking teachers should be treated equally, yet in many countries there is a broad social and commercial preference for native speaker teachers which may also involve racial issues. Attitudes towards native and non-native English speaking teachers have…

The study explores factors that enhance or inhibit the language adjustment of international students in the U.S. Using social network influence model, the study examines the effects of language resources, language norm, and technology use on international students' self-confidence in overall English skills and four subskills, namely, listening,…

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the discursive process of the negotiation and construction of teacher identity in a US-based Master of Arts for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (MATESOL) program. This study explores how both native-English-speaking (NES) and non-native-English-speaking (NNES) student teachers'…

Through multiple case studies, this article examines the learning experiences of three Korean students in a MATESOL program and how they made sense of the Discourses (Gee, 1996) that they encountered in their course work. The students experienced enculturation on three interrelated dimensions: disciplinary, linguistic, and cultural knowledge, the…

This study examines 75 Chinese EFL learners' test-taking strategies and their relationship with listening performance. It further looks into how students adjust their strategies under four different task conditions. The participants completed a three-phase (before/during/after) test-taking questionnaire and were given a listening test comprising…

This study investigates students' attitudes toward native and nonnative speaking instructors of Spanish. A quantitative questionnaire was administered to 292 students enrolled in three different levels of undergraduate Spanish courses at a U.S. university. Participants were asked to rate Likert scale items related to native versus nonnative…