This article is one of the first attempts to study the mechanisms of foreign language learning by children with DLD. We test the effectiveness of a cognate intervention aiming to enhance cross-linguistic awareness of Dutch-speaking primary-school pupils with DLD, as part of their English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum. The participants…

This study examined the unique contribution of Home Literacy Environment (HLE), Classroom Literacy Environment (CLE), and parent and teacher expectations to the development of Dutch (L1) and English (L2) vocabulary in children in Dutch-English bilingual primary education. The children (n = 106) were tested on vocabulary in both languages in…

While Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is recognised as an effective approach worldwide, its implementation in foreign language (FL) classrooms remains difficult. Earlier studies have identified factors impeding CLT implementation, such as a lack of communicative lesson materials or teachers' more traditional views on language learning. In…

The present article gives an overview of several studies on the predictive validity of the C-test. In the first part of the article, we discuss the construct validity of this test format. Only if the underlying construct of this test is understood, can a justification for high predictive validity be made. In the second part, we discuss several…

Providing first language (L1) translations in L2 vocabulary interventions may be beneficial for L2 vocabulary learning. However, in linguistically diverse L2 classrooms, teachers cannot provide L1 translations to all children. Social robots do offer such opportunities, as they can be programmed to speak any combination of languages. This study…

We investigated age-related decline in adult learning of Dutch as an additional language (Ln) in speaking, writing, listening, and reading proficiency test scores for 56,024 adult immigrants with 50 L1s who came to the Netherlands for study or work. Performance for all four language skills turned out to decline monotonically after an age of…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to gain more insight into the linguistic characterization of dyslexia by investigating vocabulary acquisition. In a previous study, vocabulary at 17 months of age appeared to be related to familial risk (FR) of dyslexia. The aim of this study was to investigate how the differences in lexical composition further…

This longitudinal randomized trial study investigated the effects of phonological specificity training on second language (L2) vocabulary learning. Eighty-six Dutch secondary-school students participated in one of two experimental conditions or in an animacy judgment (active control) condition. Participants in the phonological specificity training…

Various studies have shown that bilingual children score lower than their monolingual peers on standardized receptive vocabulary tests. This study investigates if this effect is moderated by language distance. Dutch receptive vocabulary was tested with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). The impact of cross-language distance was examined…

Dynamic Assessment (DA) has received a considerable amount of attention in the educational sciences and beyond. DA combines instruction or feedback with assessment or testing within a single activity. DA has great potential for classroom practices, but has not been implemented in many classrooms yet. In this article, we argue that teacher…

Language ability plays a major role in children's future development. In the present study, the effect of three interactive reading approaches on children's language ability was investigated through a pre-posttest design. Participants were N = 73 children (aged 4-6) from three early childhood education classrooms. Classrooms were assigned to one…

This longitudinal study investigated to what extent the acquisition of cognates among bilingual children depends on the degree of cross-language similarity and intensity of exposure to the tested language, and whether children's sensitivity to cognates with different degrees of cross-language similarity changes over time. For three consecutive…

We examined the effects of adaptive word retrieval intervention on a classroom vocabulary program on children's vocabulary acquisition in kindergarten. In the experimental condition, word retrieval was provided in a classroom vocabulary program, combining implicit and explicit vocabulary instructions. Children performed extra word retrieval…

While multilingualism itself is a widely analyzed topic, a study about multilingualism at German schools abroad is so far unique. This quantitative study investigates the differences in the size of German expressive and receptive vocabulary between monolingual and multilingual students, aged between 5 and 11 years. A cohort of 65 multilingual…

This study focuses on the effects of task type on the retention and ease of activation of second language (L2) vocabulary, based on the multi-feature hypothesis (Moonen, De Graaff, & Westhoff, 2006). Two tasks were compared: a writing task and a list-learning task. It was hypothesized that performing the writing task would yield higher…