The present study aims to explore the semantic knowledge of a group of Iranian deaf individuals who, due mainly to auditory deprivation did not acquire language normally in early years of their life. The participants were ten deaf and a matched number of hearing individuals as control group. A test of five tasks was administrated to assess their…

This study investigates Mandarin-speaking children's knowledge of event semantics in interpreting spatial modifiers with "zai" 'at' after a posture verb or before a placement verb. The event-semantic principles investigated include subevent modification (Parsons, 1990) and aspect shift (Fong, 1997). We conducted an experimental study…

Purpose: Our purpose was to test the competing sources of input (CSI) hypothesis by evaluating an intervention based on its principles. This hypothesis proposes that children's use of main verbs without tense is the result of their treating certain sentence types in the input (e.g., "Was 'she laughing'?") as models for declaratives…

There is an ongoing debate among L2 educators regarding the best way for students to achieve effective communication and language spontaneity. The flipped classroom refers to an educational model where the traditional practice of dedicating class time to direct instruction is flipped so that students receive initial instruction at home and then…

Academic language is critical for English learners (ELs) to succeed in the science classroom. This study analyzed the instructional practices centered around academic language taking place in eight, fifth-grade classrooms during a grant-funded project. Observational data collected through a classroom observation instrument were analyzed to…

The aim of this study is to identify the effect of using discourse analysis method on the skills of reading comprehension, textual analysis, creating discourse and use of language. In this study, the authentic test model with pre-test and post-test control group was used in order to determine the difference of academic achievement between…

The current study examines the effects that a coaching intervention has on the occurrences of scaffolding language techniques in a teacher's instructional delivery, in addition to the possible influences that a coaching intervention has on the teacher's ability to reflect on scaffolding language. More importantly, the study considers whether…

"WhatsApp" is a potentially influential informal learning tool that may be used on the go. This study examines its potential utility in EFL writing with special reference to gender. The treatment encompasses a "WhatsApp"-based instructional program designed specifically to help develop writing performance, along the aspects of…

This article describes a field experiment with a pretest-posttest control group design which investigated the potential of reading picture books to children for supporting their mathematical understanding. The study involved 384 children from 18 kindergarten classes in 18 schools in the Netherlands. During three months, the children in the nine…

This paper presents the findings of a quasi-experimental study designed to examine the possible effect of explicit or implicit teaching of pragmatic routines regarding the significance of exploring ways to foster interlanguage pragmatic competence considering the fact that language learners, at least, could benefit the real-life language use…

This study used a within-subjects design to explore two instructional conditions for developing vocabulary in second-grade Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs)--extended instruction and embedded instruction implemented during shared interactive reading. Words assigned to the extended condition were directly taught using a multifaceted approach…

English language learners (ELLs) benefit when their teachers utilize a wide range of English as a Second Language (ESL) instructional strategies. However, content-area teachers often are unfamiliar with these ESL strategies as they have not received extensive professional development on meeting the needs of ELLs, especially within the context in…

With the emergence of electronic media over the past two decades, young children have been found to have increased exposure to video games, computer-based activities, and electronic books (e-books). This study explores how exposure to animated ebooks impacts young children's literacy development. A stratified convenience sample (n = 24) was…

The mastery of speaking skills in English has become a major requisite in engineering industry. Engineers are expected to possess speaking skills for executing their routine activities and career prospects. The article focuses on the experimental study conducted to improve English spoken proficiency of Indian engineering students using task-based…

The present study examines and compares the extent to which advanced L2 learners of Spanish and Spanish heritage speakers acquire the syntactic and semantic properties that regulate the grammatical representation of double complementizer questions in Spanish, a CP-related structure not present in English. Results from an aural sentence completion…