Multilingualism is a broad term that alludes to the use of several languages (not necessarily proficiently) via the mutual interaction of languages in the mind of the user or with others. Thus, it does not only target language use, but how prior linguistic and cultural experience of such users contributes to determining their communicative competence. Interest in multilingualism is growing fast in research, education, and policy. This volume addresses current research in multilingualism from such diverse education contexts as Spain, Costa Rica, Mexico or Japan in order to provide an insight into the variety and diversity of research problems in the field. Acknowledging that research questions are to still further face the challenges posed by different contexts of practice in primary, secondary and tertiary levels, this collection is divided into ten chapters that approach the selected issues from different empirical perspectives, bringing together research in relevant contextual levels and emphases such as language, content and skills acquisition, learning and teaching effectiveness, policy supervision and motivational factors.

This book offers an overview of research regarding L2 writing and L2 writing assessment with the secondary aim of making L2 writing a central topic within the field of Second Language Acquisition. This monographic volume collects and summarises the different research trends in L2 writing and explores key concepts in L2 writing assessment. It provides a compendium of the research carried out from the 1980s onwards into the assessment of writing in a foreign/second language classroom across different educational levels, outlining the major tenets of research in the field. The assessment of language learners has had a growing impact in English language teaching and applied linguistics in the last thirty years. This field is in great need of work on the assessment of writing abilities in a foreign or second language and their implications for language teaching practitioners wishing to improve their students writing. This book addresses this issue from a theoretical, empirical and pedagogical perspective.

Una de las destrezas que constituyen el aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera (L2) es la comprension lectora. Este libro analiza y estudia factores individuales que podrian afectar a la misma, como la familiaridad con el contenido, el interes en el tema, el genero del lector y su nivel de competencia en L2, asi como dos tareas de evaluacion: immediate written recall, o reproduccion de informacion del texto, y multiple choice. La lectura en general, la lectura de L2 en particular, y los modelos de lectura, hasta llegar al de Bernhardt (2005, 2010), constituyen los cimientos de la investigacion. A partir de los mismos, se analizan los factores del lector y los tipos de prueba mencionados, y se resenan una serie de estudios empiricos sobre los mismos. Finalmente, los autores dan cuenta de la investigacion que llevan a cabo con el fin de medir la influencia que dichas variables pueden ejercer sobre la comprension lectora de L2.