The theatrical heritage of Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670), the famous Czech teacher, religious thinker, and playwright, has been for a long time underestimated. There is little research on this topic. However, theatre played a very important role within the Pansophic school. The method of theatralisation was not new, but in the age of Comenius it…

Dual language learners are a growing population in early learning and care settings. Young DLLs have the potential to develop proficiency in two languages when provided adequate supports; however, most teachers of young DLLs feel inadequately prepared to support DLLs. Cultivating Oral Language and Literacy Talent in Students (COLLTS) is an…

The three types of stresses namely "word stress," "compound stress" and "phrasal stress" are the key elements to determine the exact means of conveying a specific intent in an utterance. Therefore during perception and production of such meaning carrying codes, being able to use the right stress pattern is vitally…

Literacy education is always a potentially problematic undertaking, one that shifts people's relationships among themselves, with bodies of transmitted knowledge and with structures of political control (Collins & Blot, 2003; Lee, 2004; Mazrui, 1990). The teaching of writing and composition in early 20th-century Japan presented a number of…

This article aims at the feature analysis of four expository essays (Text A/B/C/D) written by secondary school students with a focus on the differences between spoken and written language. Texts C and D are better written compared with the other two (Texts A&B) which are considered more spoken in language using. The language features are…

This article reports on the development and use of the Developmental Sentence Scoring for Japanese (DSSJ), a new morpho-syntactical measure for Japanese constructed after the model of Lee's English Developmental Sentence Scoring model. Using this measure, the authors calculated DSSJ scores for 84 children divided into six age groups between 2;8…

This article reports on the design and use of a profiler for lexical sophistication (i.e., use of advanced vocabulary), which was created to assess the lexical richness of intermediate and advanced Swedish second language (L2) learners' French and Italian. It discusses how teachers' judgments (TJs) of word difficulty can contribute to the…

Recent years have brought increasing attention to studies of language acquisition in a country where the language is spoken, as opposed to formal language study in classrooms. Research on language learners in immersion contexts is important, as the question of whether study abroad is valuable is still somewhat controversial among researchers…

This paper details the use of a free and access-controlled wiki as the learning management system for a four-week teaching module designed to improve the oral communication skills of Japanese university EFL students. Students engaged in repeated experiential learning cycles of planning, doing, observing, and evaluating their performance of a role…

Discusses comparative analysis of spoken and written versions of a narrative to demonstrate that features which have been identified as characterizing oral discourse are also found in written discourse and that the written short story combines syntactic complexity expected in writing with features which create involvement expected in speaking.…

Considers reasons for the lack of acceptance of video communication; examines differences between spoken characteristics of video-mediated communication and face-to-face interaction; and evaluates two video communication systems in the United Kingdom, an Integrated Services Digital Network and LIVE-NET (London Interactive Video Education Network).…

Explores the development in children of dual-level phonological processing. The study suggests that even language-delayed six year olds form underlying representations composed of morphophonemic segments. Differences in performance between the groups studied (first graders, young adults, language-delayed first graders) are discussed. (55…

Comparison of the moribund dialects of Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, and Smith Island, Maryland, demonstrates that valuable insight into the patterning of variation and change in language death can be obtained by investigating moribund varieties of healthy languages. Discusses comparative investigation of two kinds of linguistic decay:…

As a result of difficulty in applying linguistic theory to teaching remedial writing to college students, a technique was developed that uses comparisons of spoken and written English to assist in composition and revision. Specific techniques and examples are outlined. (MSE)

Discusses the design and use of the Computer Model for Language Acquisition (COMOLA), a computer program designed to analyze syntactic development in second-language learners by examining their oral utterances. Also compares COMOLA to the recently developed Computer-Aides Linguistic Analysis (COALA) program. (MDM)