Teaching linguistic aspects relevant to text construction is an essential component of any thorough writing instruction program, despite the conflicting evidence regarding its effectiveness. In this study, 889 second- and fourth-grade students were assigned to one of three conditions: Self-Regulated Development (SRSD), SRSD-connectors (SRSD-C),…

Background: Reading comprehension is a complex process influenced by many factors. However, the abilities that are known to influence reading comprehension may not contribute equally for children with different levels of oral language. Aims: Here we examined the relationship of two factors known to influence reading comprehension (morphology and…

The pedagogies that are currently being put forward within a broad multilingual paradigm in languages education endorse the general principle that learning is a collaborative and dialogic process engaging learners and teachers as partners that bring diverse linguistic, cultural and other knowledge into the classroom. The plurilingual approach to…

Immersion students' language abilities are generally characterized by strong receptive skills (listening, reading) and less developed productive skills (speaking, writing) when compared with L1 speakers of the immersion language (e.g., Allen et al. 1990; Cummins 1998; Harley 1992). In this paper we report results from a six-month mixed-methods…

This paper shall describe the bridging strategies used by Grades 3 and 4 English teachers from schools in two regions in the Philippines to help their multilingual students transition from using the mother tongue as medium of instruction in the different subject areas to using English in the English classroom. Data were obtained through…

This paper reports findings of a project on pedagogical translanguaging (PTL) among 128 fourth-grade students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in German primary schools. Over a period of six months, 20% of lesson time in EFL classes was devoted to multilingualism involving students' minority languages. In a control group pre-post-test…

In primary-level German writing instruction, spelling discussions (German: "Rechtschreibgespräche") have become a well-established interactional method of teaching orthography, prompting the children to exchange their hypotheses about orthographic features of written words. Focusing on spellings of ambisyllabic consonants, this…

In the telling case presented here, the instructional practices an exemplary teacher used to scaffold fourth-grade emergent bilinguals' comprehension of a challenging informational science text are identified, analyzed, and discussed. Data sources included observation field notes, video and audio recording of 11 hours of instruction, the teacher's…

We report on a research project that develops and measures the efficacy of multilingual teaching approaches in the early English foreign language (FL) classroom in Germany. Although there is an abundance of programmatic calls for integrating minority and other languages the students speak in FL teaching, there are few materials and methods for…

Studies show that morphological and lexical awareness is a particularly important variable for reading comprehension after the primary school years. Research on L1 students' reading and writing competence has revealed correlations between reading and writing with regard to metalinguistic awareness, specifically also with regard to the subtypes:…

This intervention study examined the effect of English morphological instruction on the development of English as well as Malay morphological awareness and word reading abilities among Malay-English bilingual fourth graders in Singapore, where English is the medium of instruction. The intervention group experienced semester-long instruction in…

In this paper, both a cognitive and a sociocultural theoretical perspective are used to bring together findings from two studies that investigated the effects of instruction designed to enhance the potentially positive effect of peer interaction on L2 development. Despite differences between the studies' learning contexts, participants' age, and…