Despite attention by educators and researchers to the advancement of robotics research in education, little experimental research has been conducted on the use of robots in language education for young children. This paper reports on a study aimed at providing an improved English language development assessment questionnaire specifically for use…

Relatively late mastery of scalar implicatures has been suggested to correlate with children's immature processing capacities, such as their limited working memory. Yet, many studies that tested for a link between children's working memory and their computation of scalar implicatures have failed to find any correlation. One possible reason is that…

Language delay impacts children's social development. Game-based teaching has shown promise in enhancing language skills, however, the effectiveness of digital game-based teaching for children with language delay remains underexplored. This study, focusing on Chinese kindergarten students, investigated the impact of digital game-based teaching…

Verbal interactions between children and educators can support the language development of preschoolers when conversations are of high quality. Educators' conversations with preschoolers are known to be responsive, but they are not always sufficiently complex. Educators' talk and topics may be too simple to propel preschoolers' oral language…

The present study aimed to explore the specific components of home literacy resources (HLR) and parental behaviours during shared book reading (SBR) that may contribute to the language development of Chinese-speaking hearing-impaired children. A total of 90 Chinese-speaking hearing-impaired children aged 3 to 6 years, along with their parents,…

Social justice language education (SJLE) explores the ways in which language classrooms can be transformed to disrupt the existing oppressive policies and practices in schools and the society at large (Ortaçtepe Hart & Martel, 2020; Ortaçtepe Hart, 2023; Ortega, 2021). As an approach within SJLE, dramatizing children's literature can raise the…

In a body of empirical research, it has been observed that young children from across different linguistic communities adhered to a particular type of nonadult interpretation of disjunction: They appear to interpret disjunction conjunctively. Through three experiments with Japanese-speaking preschoolers, we investigate the source of this nonadult…

It is generally acknowledged that alternative strategies are required to enable children with disability to access storytelling activities. In this study, we sought to analyse the benefits of one such strategy: an arts-based multisensory story and rhyme program delivered to children with Down syndrome and autism spectrum disorder. In order to…

This study aims to document the implementation of sign bilingualism and co-enrollment education in a kindergarten in Quzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, to identify the major characteristics of the programme, and to report findings of children's language in terms of vocabulary and surveys on the views and attitudes of the stakeholders of the…

Existing work on the acquisition of polarity-sensitive expressions (PSIs) suggests that children show an early sensitivity to the restricted distribution of negative polarity items (NPIs), but may be delayed in the acquisition of positive polarity items (PPIs). However, past studies primarily targeted PSIs that are highly frequent in children's…

This research presents reflections from focus group discussions with childcare providers and parents of preschoolers in one African American community situated within a large Midwestern city in the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine parents' and childcare providers' conceptions of literacy and language related to school…

Purpose: Early motor abilities (gesture, oral motor, and gross/fine skills) are related to language abilities, and this is not due to an association with cognitive or symbolic abilities: Oral motor skills are uniquely associated with language abilities at 21 months of age. It is important to determine whether this motor-language relationship…

Tender Shoots is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) for parents aimed at improving preschool children's oral language skills relevant for later reading. Parents of 72 preschool children (M = 50 months) were randomly assigned to either a Rich Reading and Reminiscing (RRR) condition, a Strengthening Sound Sensitivity (SSS) condition, or an…

Purpose: The purpose of this randomized controlled trial was to examine the effects of a multitiered system of language support (MTSLS) on kindergarteners' narrative retelling, personal stories, writing, and expository language. Method: Participants were 686 kindergarten students from four school districts in the United States. Twenty-eight…

Almost five million children attend preschool in the United States each year. Recent attention has been paid to the ways in which preschool classrooms shape children's early language development. This article discusses the importance of peers and classroom composition through the lens of age and socioeconomic status and the implications for…