Vocabulary instruction is key for the academic success of all students and is especially need for English Language Learners.  Check out the US Department of Education’s “Doing What Works Site” and their recommendations for vocabulary instruction for English as a second language k-5 learner: Provide extensive and varied vocabulary instruction...

In the recently published “Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching and Learning – Volume II” (2011) there is an informative chapter by Nation and Webb on what research says supports vocabulary learning.  I will outline the five conditions they describe so that you can work towards these in your...

Borrero & Yeh (2011) just published some interesting exploratory research on 269 ethnically diverse high schooler’s opinions on what helps them learn English and be academically successful in the journal Educational Researcher.  Among the findings is that the students reported that their English classes in school, their teachers, and studying...

In their study of 238 preschoolers, Leung, Silverman, Nandakumar, Qian, and Hines’ (2011) findings suggest that both monolingual English speakers and English Language Learners learned English words in a similar order – meaning that the order of word difficulty of their word list was the similar for both groups.  However,...