This Family and Practitioner Brief discusses the challenge in translating complex scientific words with abstract concepts from spoken/written language to American Sign Language (ASL).

Five-to-six-year-olds' abilities to detect and solve ambiguities in spoken language have been found to be a predictor of their later reading abilities in first-to-third grade. However, the origins of this relationship remain unclear. Success in ambiguity detection may be reflective of overall language attainment, which varies with socioeconomic…

The measurement of second language (L2) productive lexical proficiency has driven a great deal of research over the past two decades. Research has indicated that more proficient speakers and writers tend to use a wider range of words and that more proficient writers tend to use words that are more sophisticated (less frequent in reference…

Background: Although most prevalent in childhood, the acquisition of new words in oral vocabulary takes place right across the lifespan. Of the many factors that influence oral vocabulary learning, one extrinsic factor is the listening environment. The current study aimed to examine whether the presence of noise impacts oral vocabulary learning in…

Little evidence has been reported for narrative-related difficulties for Chinese Mandarin-speaking school-age children with developmental language disorder (DLD). This study aimed to capture the indices from narratives that can differentiate Chinese children with and without DLD. Oral narrative and written narrative samples were collected from…

In this study, we examined to what extent orthographic skills, phonological processing, oral vocabulary, and word memory accounted for variance in reading comprehension among upper-elementary school children with and without dyslexia. The tasks came from the Tests of Dyslexia (TOD). Data from 753 participants (typically developing n = 575;…

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate how hearing loss affects (a) spoken language processing and (b) processing of faster speech in school-age children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). Method: Spoken language processing was compared in thirty-six 7- to 12-year-olds who are DHH and 31 peers with normal hearing using a word detection…

Students must use oral and written explanations to demonstrate their grasp of academic content, but little is known about the progression of elementary students' explanatory language, particularly oral language. The current study of 512 explanations produced by 128 third- through sixth-grade students examines whether children's oral explanations…

Purpose: Although children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are known to have difficulties with emergent literacy skills, few available studies have examined emergent literacy skills in Arabic-speaking children with DLD. Even though Arabic language characteristics, such as diglossia and orthographic structure, influence the acquisition…

This study examines language demands in undergraduate university mathematics classes with a view to better preparing and supporting international and other culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in the United States universities. We observed and analyzed the language demands of 13 entry-level mathematics classes across two large…

The ability to associate different types of number representations referring to the same quantity (symbolic Arabic numerals, signed/spoken number words, and nonsymbolic quantities), is an important predictor of overall mathematical success. This foundational skill--mapping--has not been examined in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. To…

The spoken word production process includes four identifiable stages: conceptualization, lexical selection, form encoding, and articulation. This dissertation studies the spoken word production process of producing Mandarin monosyllabic words, focusing on lexical selection and form encoding. The Chinese languages, including Mandarin, differ from…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the direct and indirect relations between short-term memory (STM), reading, oral language, and writing at the letter, word, and discourse levels in young, developing writers both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Method: Participants were 449 English-speaking kindergarten students (52% female)…

Purpose: Many child-, hearing-, and device-related factors contribute to spoken language outcomes in children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). Recently, the family environment has been implicated as another contributing factor in language development. However, most studies on the role of families in language outcomes of children who are DHH…

This content analysis explored children's fictional storybooks and informational science books to determine their differences in high-quality text features that support oral language (OL) development. We also explored the opportunities for OL development in curricular books compared to trade books. Using systematic coding procedures, we evaluated…