This study investigated how word and child characteristics affect children's ability to learn the meanings of novel words. Participants were fourth- and fifth-graders representing native English speakers (NE) and bilingual learners with fluent English proficiency (FEP) and designated English Learners (EL). Students were taught the meanings of a…

What determines consonant doubling in English? This question is pursued by using a large lexical database to establish systematic correlations between spelling, phonology and morphology. The main insights are: Consonant doubling is most regular at morpheme boundaries. It can be described in graphemic terms alone, i.e. without reference to…

Many English phonemes have more than one possible spelling. People's choices among the options may be influenced by sublexical patterns, such as the identity of neighboring sounds within the word. However, little research has explored the possible role of lexical conditioning. Three experiments examined the potential effects of one such factor:…

This paper provides a short overview of current issues in research on continuous reading in non-Roman orthographies. At the same time it also serves as an introduction to the present Reading and Writing Special Issue on this topic. The main questions examined in the contributions to this volume are closely related to issues that have been central…

Paired associated learning (PAL) is a critical skill for making arbitrary associations among print, pronunciation and meaning in reading development. Extended from past research of PAL, this study investigated whether PAL operated flexibly to linguistic demands of languages, by examining word reading abilities in Chinese-English bilingual…

The present study investigated the role of vocabulary depth in reading comprehension among a diverse sample of monolingual and bilingual children in grades 2-4. Vocabulary depth was defined as including morphological awareness, awareness of semantic relations, and syntactic awareness. Two hundred ninety-four children from 3 schools in a…