Verb use and the production of verb argument structure in the written texts of children in elementary school is a key stepping stone towards academic writing success that has remained relatively unexplored and is a notable gap in our understanding of writing development. To evaluate the role of verbs in the written narrative texts of children, we…

Spelling is influenced by implicit cues, but less is known about variability in this reliance. We assessed whether the influence of three implicit cues on Dutch past tense spelling was moderated by grade, literacy, and format. An Auditory infinitive, Written infinitive, and Picture+cloze format was completed by 68 third-graders and 47…

The article discusses the potential of combining learner corpus research with experimental studies in order to fine-tune the understanding of learner language development. It illustrates the complementarity of the two methodological approaches with data from an ongoing study of the acquisition of the English tense and aspect system by French…

Previous research on second language (L2) vocabulary learning has examined the relationship between word properties and learnability (e.g. Ellis and Beaton 1993). Few studies, however, have examined patterns in partial word form learning as a method of assessing learnability and improving our understanding of allocation of processing resources…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the handwriting characteristics of secondary school students with and without physical disabilities (PD). With the use of a computerized Chinese Handwriting Assessment Tool (CHAT), it was made possible to objectively assess and analyze in detail the handwriting characteristics of individual…

English is written with interword spacing, and eliminating it negatively affects English readers. Chinese is written without interword spacing, and adding it does not facilitate Chinese readers. "Pinyin" (romanized Chinese) is written with interword spacing. This study investigated whether adding interword spacing facilitates reading in Chinese…

This study explores task-based, synchronous oral computer-mediated communication (CMC) among intermediate-level learners of Spanish. In particular, this paper examines (a) how learners in video and audio CMC groups negotiate for meaning during task-based interaction, (b) possible differences between both oral CMC modes and traditional face-to-face…

This study provides insights into the benefits of phoneme awareness intervention for children with complex communication needs (CCN). The specific aims of the study were: (1) to determine whether phoneme awareness skills can be successfully trained in children with CCN; and (2) to observe any transfer effects to phoneme awareness tasks not…

This longitudinal study examines the acquisition of subject pronouns in third language (L3) production. Participants were 90 Basque-Spanish bilingual students, learning English as a third language in a formal setting in the Basque Country. All the participants, who had received the same amount of exposure to English, were divided into three groups…