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A scaffolding instruction program, which lasted for 9 weeks, was implemented to find out its impact on 11th grade Jordanian EFL learners' reading comprehension skills. Using scaffolding instruction, the experimental group was taught three units selected from the participants' English textbook, while the control group was taught the same units with no scaffolding. Pre- and post-test procedure was used to measure the impact of the scaffolding program on the students' achievement. One-way analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA) was used to measure any statistically significant differences in the mean scores of both groups. Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was also used to find any significant differences in their posttest mean scores. Results of the study show that there are significant differences in the subjects' achievement in reading comprehension skills, in favor of the experimental group. Therefore, it is recommended that scaffolding instruction be integrated into the EFL curriculum, and that teachers be advised to match their teaching techniques with the students’ zones of proximal development.

This case study describes the language attitudes of seven high school senior students in a suburban U.S. American German foreign language (FL) classroom and how they might impact one Latina student’s language use and identity construction. Ethnographic methods (classroom observations, interviews, collection of documents) were used to answer the following research questions: (a) What language attitudes do the students of one German FL classroom express? (b) How might these language attitudes shape one Spanish speaking Latina student’s language use and identity construction? Findings suggest that most of the students’ language attitudes were characterized by stereotypes, xenophobia and populist ideologies. Additionally, the focal student “Karla” positioned herself as a compliant and hard-working student who strives for academic success and social assimilation. She has banned her first language (L1) Spanish almost completely from the school context and sacrificed her Mexican identity in order to assimilate to her peers. Only in the German FL classroom she has found ways to activate her L1 by using positive transfer of vocabulary and language structures. Implications for teachers and teacher educators are discussed, e.g. the importance of addressing social issues and language attitudes from critical perspectives in FL classrooms.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of the drama activities on academic success in basic language arts, and its relation with learning styles. The group in this study consisted of 58 6th grade students attending elementary school in Erzurum City Centre during the 2009-2010 academic year. The group was divided in two sections: one was the control group, in which a conventional method was used; the other was the experimental group. This study uses the “pre-test/post-test control group” pattern, which is one of the experimental research models. The learning styles for the study group were gathered using the Kolb Learning Style Inventory; the data on their academic success was gathered with the Turkish Course Achievement Test; student opinions were gathered using the Student Opinion Form). The qualitative data was analyzed with SPSS 11.5 while the qualitative data was analyzed with the content analysis method. Analyses demonstrated a considerable difference between the experimental and control group in teaching the Turkish course language skills, favouring the experimental group in terms of academic success and opinions.

In the context of higher education, lecturer questioning is a feasible means to encourage active student participation in a large class setting. Questions are useful for both instructional interactional purposes but there may be a disciplinary difference in questioning practices. This study examined arts and science lecturers’ use of questions in lecture introductions and student responses to the questions. Forty-seven lecture introductions delivered in English in a Malaysian university were audio taped and transcribed. Questions were categorized into display, echoic, indirect, referential and rhetorical questions. The analysis of 14 hours of lecture introduction discourse showed that 1001 questions were asked at the rate of one question per minute, indicating extensive use of questions in the lecture introductions examined. The arts lecturers tended to ask more questions during the lecture introduction but both groups relied on display questions and echoic questions. Only 22.18% of the questions were answered, with better response from the arts students. The lecturers asked more display questions, but these questions were less likely to be answered compared to referential questions. However, the type of question with the best response was the indirect question. The results showed that questions were mainly for activating students’ prior knowledge.

It has been long recognized that English language users tend to produce grammatically correct, yet situationally inappropriate utterances. The current study investigates whether pre-service English teachers in an EFL context have acquired pragmatic competence, more specifically, it examines whether they can successfully perform certain speech acts, such as responding, giving advice, refusing, or making requests. The data consisted of 23 pre-service teachers’ responses to a discourse completion task carried out at a Turkish university. Results indicate that although these pre-service teachers tend to perform speech acts in ways that diverge from native speaker norms, most of their responses are comprehensible to other English language users including native speakers.

This study hypothesized that students' loci of control affected their language achievement. 198 (N=198) EFL students took the Rotter’s (1966) locus of control test and were classified as locus-internal (ni=78), and locus-external (ne=120). They then took their ordinary courses and at the end of the semester, they were given their exams. Their semester-end cumulative grade point averages (GPA) were compared to their previous-term GPA. SPANOVA results did not identify locus of control (LoC) as a predictor of achievement. Results also indicated that factors like LoC, if at all, interact with proficiency only at the advanced level.

In the present article, the authors present an analysis of the rate of acquisition of English based on the state’s language proficiency data, revealing that the core idea underlying Arizona’s Structured English Immersion (SEI) program is dramatically erroneous: Children do not learn English at the hypothesized rate of one year, and therefore cannot be expected to learn school content in the face of persisting language barriers. The findings show that the underlying theory of SEI, which posits that children will learn English so quickly under conditions of total immersion that no academic deficits will accrue, has not succeeded for English Learners in Arizona. The authors raise concerns about the legality of the state’s ELL program in the context of Castañeda v. Pickard (1981), arguing that Arizona has not produced evidence confirming that language barriers have been adequately overcome by its language education policy, and that the underlying theory of the state’s program has been empirically shown to be incorrect.