This study provides the first large-scale quantitative exploration of mathematical language use in U.S. classrooms. Our approach employs natural language processing techniques to describe variation in the use of mathematical language in 1,657 fourth and fifth grade lessons by teachers and students in 317 classrooms in four districts over three…

This study explores using transfer learning in machine learning for natural language processing (NLP) to create generic automated essay scoring (AES) models, providing instant online scoring for statewide writing assessments in K-12 education. The goal is to develop an instant online scorer that is generalizable to any prompt, addressing the…

Recent studies have accumulated to suggest that children, akin to adults, exhibit a processing advantage for formulaic language (e.g. "save energy") over novel language (e.g. "sell energy"), as well as sensitivity to phrase frequencies. The majority of these studies are based on formulaic sequences in their canonical form. In…

Translation, from a cultural perspective, is the exchange and communication between two distinct cultures, posing a challenge to the translator to possess not only fluency but also a deep understanding of the history and culture of both languages. This study examined the comprehension abilities for translation strategies of native Chinese English…

This study investigates the influences of early and intense L2 exposure on children's L1 causative verb production, assessed by an experimental causative verb production task. Turkish expresses causality by morphological and lexical means, whereas English does so by periphrastic and lexical means. Learning L2 English might enhance L1 Turkish…

This longitudinal study documents a trilingual child's struggle with decoding and word recognition, the remedies sought to help him start reading in his second language (English) while he was in French immersion, and his performance after the intervention on tests of phonological awareness in L1 Romanian, L2 English, and L3 French. The study…

The ability to automatically assess the quality of paraphrases can be very useful for facilitating literacy skills and providing timely feedback to learners. Our aim is twofold: a) to automatically evaluate the quality of paraphrases across four dimensions: lexical similarity, syntactic similarity, semantic similarity and paraphrase quality, and…

Individuals with lower proficiency in a second language tend to produce more disfluent speech patterns in the second language. Speech disfluencies refer to interruptions in the forward flow of speech and are distinct from the colloquial use of "fluency," to characterize knowledge of a language. Prior research indicates that some speech…

In this study, we have explored the ways in which small-group work in science can contribute to strengthen multilingual students' subject language and conceptual development when working with language-oriented classroom activities in primary classrooms. The aim is to determine whether it is possible to identify factors in interactions in…

This paper investigates the role of interpreters in addressing cultural differences in the context of a cross-cultural collaborative teacher professional development project. Based on positioning theory, this study employed interpreter-mediated interactions and interviews to reveal the complex roles that interpreters played when interpreting…

As with all learners, English learners (ELs) require more than basic reading and writing skills to successfully engage with rigorous academic content, progress through school, and be fully prepared for postsecondary education and careers. ELs must be able to access grade-level content while simultaneously developing proficiency and autonomy in…

Teaching simulations such as scriptwriting tasks offer a novel way to support pre-service teachers in gaining diagnostic competencies and in guiding students to work through difficulties. We first report on the theory-driven development of a scriptwriting task, specifically the theoretically-founded language- and accompanying content-related…

Academic discourse communities and learning circles are characterized by collaboration, sharing commonalities in terms of social interactions and language. The discourse of these communities is composed of jargon, common terminologies, and similarities in how they construe and communicate meaning. This study examines the extent to which discourse…

Contrastive focus, conveyed by prosodic cues, marks important information. Studies have shown that 6-year-olds learning English and Japanese can use contrastive focus during online sentence comprehension: focus used in a "contrastive context" facilitates the identification of a target referent (speeding up processing), whereas focus used…

This article provides a microscopic view of learners' first encounters with multimodal texts in their primary EFL classrooms. It is argued that multimodal texts create opportunities for language development in the primary EFL classroom: they offer different access points for comprehension, invite participation, and motivate repeated practice so…