This mixed-methods study aimed to examine how the quality of interactions between a paraprofessional and a preschooler during playtime impacts students' language development. The data collected and analyzed included in-depth classroom observations and interviews with paraprofessionals. Data measured the paraprofessional's actions, trends,…

Research Findings: This study conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to examine the relationship between the home environment and the development of English as a second/foreign language for young Asian children. A systematic search of relevant databases generated 22 eligible studies published between 2001 and 2020 (N[subscript…

Extensive evidence indicates that early vocabulary skills predict later reading development among monolingually developing children. Some evidence suggests that a relationship between vocabulary and later reading also holds across languages among children whose home language differs from the school language. However, these findings have been mixed…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine whether and how learning American Sign Language (ASL) is associated with spoken English skills in a sample of ASL-English bilingual deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children. Method: This cross-sectional study of vocabulary size included 56 DHH children between 8 and 60 months of age who were…

The research report describes the ability of Kazakh preschool children to tell narratives relating to mental states, and the connection with theory of mind tasks about false beliefs. Three groups of preschool children (N = 29; 3-, 4-, and 5- year-olds) from the city of Almaty were tested in the Kazakh language. The results show very high…

This study examined how parental expectations were associated with Chinese-Norwegian dual language learners' Chinese language skills. A total of 118 Chinese parents in Norway completed a questionnaire in which they reported their expectations for their children's Chinese language development, characteristics of the home literacy environment…

Korean employs case ellipsis (CE), in which nouns are permitted to appear without case markers in certain contexts, particularly in informal settings. Heritage speakers (HS) are typically exposed to informal registers and thus exposed to fewer uses of overt case markers in the input. Given the limited exposure, it is predicted that young HS of…

While the demographic diversity of children served in early childhood classrooms continues to grow, world language learning opportunities for English-speaking preschoolers remain a rarity. Efforts to teach world languages in addition to English at the preschool level may be hampered by limited early childhood educator expertise, lack of…

This article revisits the "jongo" activity 'Pisei na Pedra' (2014) integrated into the "Nossa Casinha" guide (Martins & Sala, 2022) for teaching Portuguese to migrant children. "Jongo" is seen as an Afro-Brazilian form of expression, encompassing chants, drumming, collective dance, and spirituality (Rufino, 2014,…

In this quantitative study, we investigated the relationships between parenting and young learners' English learning--specifically parents' sociocultural influence on elementary school children's motivation--within the framework of self-determination theory (SDT). We surveyed 212 dyads of Japanese parents and their children (8-12 years old) and…

Background: Recent research has shown that socio-emotional and language competencies are positively associated with each other. However, few studies have explored these associations for the second language competencies (L2) of young dual language learners (DLLs). Aims: This longitudinal study investigated possible bidirectional associations…

Despite much attention having been paid to foreign language (FL) reading and related variables such as self-efficacy, relatively few studies have focused on young learners, and even fewer on storybooks, arguably the commonest genre read by children worldwide for language learning. As FL learning commences at a young age in many contexts globally,…

This study examines the reflexivity of immigrant children in forming their language attitudes (LAs). Considering the special cultural environment of the Chinese community in Australia, which refers to the community's well-matched cultural powers with Australia, this research explored Chinese Australian children's conflicting but reflexive LAs and…

This systematic review aims to synthesize the literature on the effects of cross-linguistic transfer on Spanish/English bilinguals' reading comprehension skills. The search yielded at least 90 studies in which participants were Spanish/English bilinguals aged birth to Grade 12. Researchers assessed participants' decoding and/or linguistic…

This study explored the relations between parental formal education, residential mobility, and children's school readiness in a sample of 509 Head Start children, 30% of whom were Spanish-speaking Dual Language Learners (DLLs). Additionally, it explored whether the relations between these demographic factors and school readiness varied as a…