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…

Purpose: Language sampling is a critical component of language assessments. However, there are many ways to elicit language samples that likely impact the results. The purpose of this study was to examine how different discourse types and elicitation tasks affect various language sampling outcomes. Method: A diverse group of K-3 students (N =…

Purpose: Children's ability to adjust one's language according to discourse context is important for success in academic settings. This study examined whether second graders vary in linguistic and discourse features depending on discourse contexts, that is, when describing pictures in contextualized (describing the picture to an examiner while…

Purpose: Children's ability to adjust one's language according to discourse context is important for success in academic settings. This study examined whether second graders vary in linguistic and discourse features depending on discourse contexts, that is, when describing pictures in contextualized (describing the picture to an examiner while…

Using the 2.4-million-word written Spanish subsection of the Corpus of Utah Dual Language Immersion, collected from a large-scale standardized writing assessment of K-12 Spanish second language (L2) students, this study focuses on lexical complexity as operationalized by three measures: lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical…

The current study investigates the impact of the teachers' societal dominant language use within a weak version of translanguaging in early heritage language education. We explored five preschool teachers' use of English, the dominant majority language, in Tamil heritage language classes in Singapore and examined its impact on 33 children's…

Cross-linguistically, monolingual children produce target-like inflected verbs much earlier than they can reliably distinguish between singular and plural subject-verb agreement morphology in comprehension (i.e. Johnson, V., J. de Villiers, and H. Seymour. 2005. "Agreement Without Understanding? The Case of Third Person Singular /s/."…

Elementary French immersion (FI) language arts teachers often organize instruction around small learning groups. Students rotate through learning stations/centres and work independently with their peers on L2 literacy skills. This study examined how principles of task-based language teaching (TBLT) can be used and/or adapted to further support…

The purpose of this study was to create and prototype a dual language assessment task that allows young English learners to use their entire cadre of linguistic resources (language and non-verbal resources) to obtain information about their emergent language abilities. We developed a dual language assessment task in which students described a…

Oral narrative retells are rich sources of information for language development. Investigators collected English-language oral narrative retells during the fall and spring from 65 Spanish-English-speaking dual language learners (DLL) in kindergarten and first grade. Investigators examined transcripts of oral narratives for (a) inclusion and…

The purpose of this study was to explore the ways emergent bilingual first-graders draw on multiple linguistic resources during reading assessments and the participation of their Spanish-dominant parents in those assessments, as children engaged in English and Spanish retelling tasks. Informed by a translanguaging lens, sociopsycholinguistic and…

Teacher language and students' on-task behavior were examined in language arts lessons with and without classroom drama in two self-contained third grade classrooms for students with learning disabilities and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Language arts lessons that integrated classroom drama were associated with significantly higher…

Lesson transitions are important units for analysis not only for establishing the presence of group/pair work but also for examining the contextual conditions for small-group learning. Scholars have suggested that the "open" or "closed" contextual conditions set up through the teacher's use of language to introduce group/pair…

Six pre-service teacher candidates TCs, each engaged in field experiences in Kindergarten or First Grade classrooms at an urban based elementary school compared the impact of interactive read alouds and simple read alouds on children's Tier two vocabulary meaning acquisition and usage. Each TC read a different trade book that contained at least 8…