This study explores a Japanese-Korean-English trilingual Asian-American child's identity negotiation in a multicultural book club. Drawing upon the conception of "figured world" (Holland et al. 1998. "Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds." Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), it investigates how the book club as "a…

Natural language is known to play a crucial and specific role for children's learning in school mathematics. Not only does it carry special vocabulary, but subtle differences between natural languages may lead to surprising challenges, for instance, for learners who are not taught mathematics in their mother tongue. In this paper, the…

This article investigates the acquisition of empathy verbs in child Japanese, focusing on verbs of giving/receiving: "age-ru" 'give,' "kure-ru" 'give,' and "mora(w)-u" 'receive.' These verbs are distinguished by which argument the speaker empathizes with when describing an event. For "age-ru" 'give,' the…

The goal of this paper is to tease apart two approaches to the source of children's consistent scope assignment in negative sentences containing logical connectives: the Semantic Subset Principle and the Semantic Subset Maxim. Previous developmental work has observed that four- to six-year-old children across languages have difficulty with…

This study examined the effect of class sizes on differences in the trajectories of elementary school students' long-term Japanese language achievement by analyzing panel data composed of standardized achievement test scores at five points from around the end of first grade to around the end of fifth grade. The data for 103 schools, 162 classes,…

We examined whether developing reading skills in the two scripts of Japanese, syllabic Hiragana and morphographic Kanji, had differential effects on underlying cognitive skills. One hundred ninety-one Japanese children (97 girls, 94 boys; M[subscript age] = 100.23 months) were assessed on rapid automatized naming (RAN), vocabulary, morphological…

Research from dual and bilingual education programs shows that the use of a student's home language for reading instruction is one of the most beneficial practices for multilingual learners. Given the plethora of home languages encountered in public schools, how can teachers who do not speak the languages of their students utilize a student's home…

Background: In opaque orthographies, such as English, children with low reading skills tend to rely more on semantic information due to their inadequate acquisition of sub-lexical knowledge. This tendency has also been reported for kanji, a non-alphabetic and opaque Japanese orthography. However, previous studies on this phenomenon have had…

We examined the cognitive predictors of early word reading skills in Japanese syllabic Hiragana and morphographic Kanji. Eighty-three Japanese kindergarten children (M age = 75.6 months, SD = 3.4) were assessed on nonverbal IQ, vocabulary, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological memory, morphological awareness, and…

Developing young learners' language awareness is becoming an important educational goal in a rapidly globalised world characterised by linguistic and cultural diversity. Drawing upon previous research in the field, the article highlights the importance of promoting language diversity and nurturing language awareness from an early age. We present a…

Purpose: This study investigated the auditory comprehension of Japanese sentences including relative clauses (RCs) by 52 Japanese-speaking children with typical development (TD) and 16 children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method: A picture-pointing task measured RC and main clause (MC) comprehension for object and subject relatives in…

Augmented Reality (AR) has gained significant attention in the field of language learning. This study conducted a systematic review of research on AR-supported language learning published between 2008 and 2022. Thirty articles were selected based on specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, and analyzed using an analytical framework with the…

Reporting on the relationship between homework, foreign language learning and self-regulated learning, this paper examines how a teacher used homework to promote Japanese language learning in a Year 4 class at an Australian primary school. The study drew on naturally occurring data including classroom observations and student-produced video of…

The strength of English learners' second language reading is closely associated with academic success. Using qualitative research methods and verbal protocols, this study examines four elementary-level English learners' uses of reading strategies and describes how each English learner employs these strategies while reading both culturally relevant…

This study employed the mixed method explanatory sequential design to investigate Japanese fourth grade students' reading motivation. A total of 102 students first completed the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ) to investigate the differences in reading motivation among different dimensions in three categories (Competence and…