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This book explores the social construction of age in the context of EFL in Mexico. It is the first book to address the age factor in SLA from a social perspective. Based on research carried out at a public university in Mexico, it investigates how adults of different ages experience learning a new language and how they enact their age identities as language learners. By approaching the topic from a social constructionist perspective and in light of recent work in sociolinguistics and cultural studies, it broadens the current second language acquisition focus on age as a fixed biological or chronological variable to encompass its social dimensions. What emerges is a more complex and nuanced understanding of age as it intersects with language learning in a way that links it fundamentally to other social phenomena, such as gender, ethnicity and social class. (Verlag).

This study aimed to develop and culturally adapt a Compassion Scale for young learners in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, addressing the paucity of culturally appropriate assessment tools in language education. Recognizing compassion as a multifaceted construct integral to emotional development and social behavior, peer interaction, and classroom climate, the research emphasized the significance of cultural context in shaping expressions of compassion among children engaged in foreign language learning. A total of 463 EFL learners aged 9 to 15 years were recruited from language schools in Gonbad Kavous. Following rigorous translation, back-translation, and cultural adaptation processes, a 23-item Compassion Scale for EFL children was developed and validated. Psychometric analysis, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, supported a three-dimensional structure: Compassion Toward Others, Compassion Toward Oneself, and Compassion Toward Other Living Things. The scale demonstrated strong model fit (comparative fit index = 0.95, Tucker-Lewis’s index = 0.94, root mean square error of approximation = 0.050) and high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.91). The findings indicated significant correlations between compassion scores and demographic variables (age and gender), with older children and females exhibiting higher levels of compassion. In addition, socioeconomic status showed a moderate positive association. This study not only fills a critical gap in compassion research among youth in non-Western EFL contexts but also provides practical applications for language educators, curriculum developers, and school psychologists aiming to nurture compassion i.e. supportive, empathetic, and resilient learning environments among young EFL learners in Gonbad Kavous, highlighting the importance of culturally sensitive psychological tools.

This study investigates the relationship between attitudinal and non-attitudinal variables that impact digital technology use by EFL students in Vietnam. An adapted questionnaire was administered to 1,005 students from different tertiary courses. The results showed that students have a positive attitude to the use of technology and sometimes apply digital tools in their language learning. Although there is a low correlation between learners’ technology attitude and their usage of applications, other variables like age, English proficiency levels, digital competence, and the major being pursued can predict the usage of technology among students.

Purpose Defining parameters for typical development in bilingual children's first and second languages can serve as the basis for accurate language assessment. This is the first study to characterize Vietnamese and English grammatical development in a sample of bilingual children. Method Participants were 89 Vietnamese-English bilingual children, aged 3-8 years. Children completed story retell tasks in Vietnamese and English. Stories were transcribed and analyzed for grammaticality, error patterns, subordination index, and types of subordinating clauses. Of key interest were associations with age and identifying developmental patterns that were shared across languages or unique to a given language. Results Age correlated with more measures in English than in Vietnamese, suggesting that older children had higher grammaticality and greater syntactic complexity in English than younger children. Children also produced greater syntactic complexity with age in Vietnamese, but not higher grammaticality. There were a set of error patterns shared across languages (e.g., object omission) and patterns specific to each language (e.g., classifier errors in Vietnamese, tense errors in English). While children produced nominal, adverbial, and relative clauses in Vietnamese and English, the proportion of each clause type differed by language. Conclusions Results from this typically developing sample provide a reference point to improve clinical practice. Characterizing developmental patterns in sentence structure in Vietnamese and English lays the groundwork for investigations of language disorders in this bilingual population.

This paper aims to advance our understanding of how children’s use of vocabulary in writing changes as they progress through their school careers. It examines the extent to which a model of lexical sophistication as use of low-frequency, register-appropriate words adequately captures development in vocabulary use across the course of compulsory education in England. We find that the received model needs elaborating in a number of important ways. Specifically: (1) the average frequency of words in the repertoire used by older children is no lower than that of younger children. However, younger children’s writing is characterized by extensive repetition of high frequency verbs and adjectives and of low frequency nouns (the latter being a product of a focus on entities which are rarely discussed in adult writing). The role of repetition in this finding implies that lexical sophistication is inseparable from lexical diversity, a construct which is usually treated as distinct. (2) Younger children’s writing shows a preference for fiction-like vocabulary over academic-like vocabulary. As they mature, children come to make greater use of academic vocabulary in both their literary and non-literary writing, though this increase is greatest in their non-literary writing. Use of fiction vocabulary remains constant across year groups but decreases sharply in non-literary writing, showing an enhanced sense of register appropriateness. This development of register appropriate word use can be captured by relatively simple frequency-based measures that could readily be employed by teachers and researchers to track writers’ development in this aspect of word use.

The purpose of this study is to construct a national demographic profile of high school band, choir, and orchestra students in the United States using evidence from the 2004 follow-up wave of the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002. Results indicate that 21% of seniors in the United States' class of 2004 participated in school music ensembles. Significant associations were found between music ensemble participation and variables including gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), native language, parents' education, standardized test scores, and GPA. Certain groups of students, including those who are male, English language learners, Hispanic, children of parents holding a high school diploma or less, and in the lowest SES quartile, were significantly underrepresented in music programs across the United States. In contrast, white students were significantly overrepresented among music students, as were students from higher SES backgrounds, native English speakers, students in the highest standardized test score quartiles, children of parents holding advanced postsecondary degrees, and students with GPAs ranging from 3.01 to 4.0. Findings indicate that music students are not a representative subset of the population of U.S. high school students.

As numbers of language-minority children in English-medium schools continue to grow globally, one notable trend in the United States is the growth of U.S.-born preschool-age children in Spanish-speaking families, who make up the fastest-growing percentage of English language learners (ELLs) nationwide (Russakoff, 2011). Whereas Latino immigrant parents and their preschool-age children have been the subject of numerous studies of home language learning (e.g., Caspe, 2009; Duursma et al., 2007), the influence of older siblings on children's language development has been largely neglected.

Purpose: We examined the relationship between maternal level of education as an index of socioeconomic status (SES) on the narrative story retells of school-aged children who are English language learners (ELLs) to guide interpretation of results. Method: Using data available from the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts database (Miller & Iglesias, 2012), we were able to compare the language samples of 907 ELL students in kindergarten and 2nd grade whose parents had different levels of education. We used a simple linear regression to see if maternal level of education was predictive of measures of vocabulary, syntax, and narrative structure in Spanish and English narrative story retells. Results: There were no differences in language measures between children from different SES backgrounds for the Spanish language samples. There were differences with the English language samples in four of the five measures for the kindergarten sample and only three of five measures for the older children, with a smaller percentage of the variance explained. Conclusion: Despite common knowledge that SES has a negative influence on language, the actual influence on the narrative productions of school-aged ELLs was less than anticipated for English and absent for Spanish. The implications for assessment are discussed and concluded.

Language learning strategies in second language or foreign language learning rank highest among students’ personal development plans. Various factors are supposed to affect the choice of a language learning strategy such as gender, age, cultural origins, motivation and language proficiency level. This study aimed to identify the different types of language learning strategies are employed by university students, whether there exists any difference in the choice of strategies based on gender or level of study such as freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. By using a quantitative research design through a classification approach, this study collected data from a sample of 200 students (108 males and 92 females) in the age group of 18-21 years, identified through random sampling method from Al-Baha university, Saudi Arabia. All the participants were undergraduate students at different academic levels, with at least 12 years of experience of learning English in a formal context in Saudi Arabia. A written questionnaire and Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) developed by Oxford (1990) was used to collect data, and Mean, Standard Deviations, t-test value, and ANOVA were measured to analyze the findings. The findings revealed that compensation strategies were dominant among Al-Baha University students; there were also no gender or academic level differences in their selection of language learning strategy. The study also concluded that a language learning strategy should be used only to determine the best communication tool. This study provides a subtle signal for curriculum designers and material developers to pay attention to language learning strategies.