Early childhood is a critical time for oral language development. Reading aloud is one of the most common instructional activities aimed at fostering oral language skills. It plays a vital role in supporting multilingual or emergent bilingual learners' oral language learning development. Through this article, the authors wish to inform teachers of…

This paper aims to focus, to bring the existing misperception of the letters "p" and "b" in panoramic view, to make the readers understand that there is nothing defective on the side of the speakers in comprehending the sounds of the letters /p/ and /b/ when they listen to, alike other phonemic sounds. Further, it is to…

In this article, we introduce recently released, publicly available resources, which allow users to watch videos of hidden articulators (e.g. the tongue) during the production of various types of sounds found in the world's languages. The articulation videos on these resources are linked to a clickable International Phonetic Alphabet chart…

In this article, we discuss communication between early educators speaking their native language and parents who speak English as a second language. Parents who may have a limited proficiency in the second language face challenges to understanding semantic and pragmatic aspects of English. Actual early childhood conference talk in which parents…

A persistent problem for teachers in English as a Second Language (ESL) situations concerns students who speak their shared common language instead of English in the classroom. Considering the inherent difficulty of the speaking skill, this is understandable. Learners often prefer to interact socially in their native language, allowing them to…

People who grow up speaking Spanish in Texas often learn a colloquial variety of Spanish at home or in their communities and have limited abilities to move between different registers in different social contexts. As heritage language (HL) learners' understanding of the value of different language varieties plays an important role in the…

This publication contains Arizona public schools' academic standards for grade 4. The contents of this document include the following: (1) The Arts Standard 2006--Grade 4; (2) Comprehensive Health Education/Physical Activity Standards 1997--Essentials (Grades 4-8); (3) Foreign and Native Language Standards 1997--Essentials (Grades 4-8); (4)…

This booklet summarizes some of the best practices in helping infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers maximize their language skills prior to school entry. Children who are well prepared by their parents, caretakers or pre-school teachers can readily manage the transition to the academic demands of the early school years and are more likely to learn…