A questionnaire was recently developed for the use with the Spanish-speaking, and evidence have been provided about the construct internal validity by means of structural equation modelling. In this paper, two research questions were considered: (i) What new evidence does application of the Rasch model provide regarding the validity of this…

Ahead of the recent wave of social justice movements (e.g., [All] Black Lives Matter (#BLM), #MeToo, #StopJewishHate, #StopAsianHate), in 2019 the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) declared a stance on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in language education. It affirmed that it "values diversity…

The current study examined self-reported first language (Spanish) language reading and writing ability and behavior and relationships with digit span and stroop task performance. A battery of assessments and questionnaires was administered to 81 sequential Spanish-English bilingual university students in the U.S., for whom the sole language of…

This longitudinal, multi-semester study investigates the Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) in university-level communicative Spanish classrooms to find out how instructor feedback affects student performance on IPA assessments, if at all, and in what ways do teachers and students use feedback from the IPAs in their teaching and learning, if…

There is currently little research on the use of podcasting as a learning tool in the tertiary-level foreign language classroom. Here we attempt to partly fill that gap through a multiple case study of three university teachers who use this technology in their courses in Spanish as a foreign language. We obtained data for analysis primarily in two…

This case study focuses on how two learners position themselves as partners in a collaborative writing activity in a Spanish Writing course. I utilize a micro-discourse analytic approach (Eskildsen & Markee, 2018; van Compernolle, 2015, 2018) to highlight the situated nature of collaboration and the dynamicity of the collaborative writing…

This article presents the design, construct validation, and reliability of a self-report instrument in Spanish that aims to characterize different types of strategies that students can use to learn computer programming. We provide a comprehensive overview of the identification of learning strategies in the existing literature, the design and…

While the literature on second language reading agrees that exposing students to graded readers (GRs) is beneficial, little is known about how students perceive them. This study explores students' anxiety and overall experiences in a reading program (RP) using GRs in a large first-year Spanish language program. Data are based on 312 students' pre…

Research on social media in the foreign language classroom has grown significantly in the last 10 years. However, there continues to be a gap in how social media, Twitter in particular, can be used as a tool to build community within a Spanish as a second-language literature classroom. The current action research project seeks to address this gap.…

This paper examines the implications of the association patterns in our understanding of the mental lexicon. By applying the principles of graph theory to word association data, we intend to explore which measures tap better into lexical knowledge. To that end, we had different groups of English as Foreign language learners complete a lexical…

Given the challenges faced in enacting curricular expectations of developing intercultural communicative competence through the teaching of languages, this study reports on a language and culture assistants (LACs) programme that may offer a viable pathway for foreign language programmes around the world. We examine how local non-native speaker…

The Advanced Placement® Program (AP®) offers high school students the opportunity to take rigorous coursework in high school and receive college credit for AP Exam scores that meet or exceed the requirements of their attending institution. Students receiving AP credit are typically exempted from an introductory-level course or series of courses…

Most orthographies contain both accented and non-accented vowels. But are they processed as variants of the same letter unit or as separate abstract units? Recent research in French has revealed that accented vowels seem to be processed as separate units. Here we examined whether this phenomenon is universal or language-specific. We chose Spanish…

This study counters the popular assumption that Spanish Heritage Language Learners (SHLLs) on study abroad (SA) in a place of cultural origin can easily adapt and find acceptance due to the linguistic and cultural resources they bring with them. Our study builds on previous work to illustrate a more nuanced and complex story of desires for…

This research provides information toward answering the question of whether bilingual studies at the university level might be elitist. This is a recurring research topic in terms of using English for nonlanguage instruction at the primary and secondary levels, but very few studies refer to university education. We seek to fill that gap in the…