When infants hear sentences containing unfamiliar words, are some language-world links (such as noun-object) more readily formed than others (verb-predicate)? We examined English learning 14-15-month-olds' capacity for linking referents in scenes with bisyllabic nonce utterances. Each of the two syllables referred either to the object's identity,…

Friday sermons portray patterns of lexical cohesion which can demonstrate how effective communication is achieved. This study proposes a model of lexical cohesion that fits the spoken discourse of Friday sermons in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). To that end, a corpus of 25 sermons was analyzed to identify patterns of cohesion and show the impact…

Background: We examine effects on oral reading fluency (defined as automatic word recognition and prosody) when phrase-cued text (defined as marking the phrase boundaries in text) is layered on to readers theatre, an evidence-based instructional format that includes multiple readings over a period of about 5 days as students practice and prepare…

A critical component of cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) is a Q-matrix that stipulates associations between items of a test and their required attributes. The present study aims to develop and empirically validate a Q-matrix for the listening comprehension section of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). To this end, a…