Purpose: Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) working within the pediatric field will find themselves working with school-age children and consequently collaborating with teaching staff. Knowledge of the links between language, speech, and literacy can support and inform successful collaboration between the SLP and the teacher and their shared goal…

The "unskilled and unaware effect" refers to the finding that individuals who are less knowledgeable or less skilled in a domain are relatively less able to evaluate their level of skill or effectively utilise feedback relative to individuals who are more skilled. Studies finding deaf students less accurate than hearing students in…

Working with students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) can raise questions about whether language and literacy delays and difficulties are related directly to late and limited access to spoken language, to co-occurring language learning disabilities (LLD), or to both. A new Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills, which incorporates…

In school, deaf and hard of hearing students (d/hh) are often exposed to American Sign Language (ASL) while also developing literacy skills in English. ASL does not have a written form, but is a fully accessible language to the d/hh through which it is possible to mediate understanding, draw on prior experiences, and engage critical thinking and…

SMS language is English language slang, used as a means of mobile phone text messaging. This practice may impact on the written language skills of learners at school. The main aim of this study was to determine the perspectives of Grade 8 and 9 English (as Home Language) educators in Gauteng regarding the possible influence of SMS language on…

Reports on three research studies which investigate different aspects of some of the factors thought to inhibit language development. (RB)

Humor--and communication itself--when translating from one language to another, depends on an accumulation of shared understandings about how people say things in a given culture. Examples are given in translations of Portuguese to English and English to Portuguese. (CB)

This research project was designed to analyze by quantitative methods a corpus of writing produced by four groups of American college students enrolled in German courses and by one group of professional German writers. Analysis was undertaken in order to determine whether or not significant quantitative differences in the use of selected syntactic…

This comparison of 15 successful and 15 unsuccessful college foreign-language learners found significant intergroup differences in performance on the Modern Language Aptitude Test, tests of written and oral language in the syntactic and phonological domains, and math calculation. Results suggest that students with foreign language learning…

The study described here attempted to shed light on decision-making during first language (English) and second language (French) writing processes of French immersion program graduates. It also replicated part of a previous study on the role of first language (L1) writing skills and second language (L2) competence when writing in L2. A think-aloud…

Information on the Ontario Test of English Achievement is presented. Attention is directed to the background and objectives of the test, test development, subtest characteristics and properties, validity, and recommendations concerning test use. The objective of the test was to determine the language competence of incoming students to assist…

This paper, intended for freshman English instructors who teach reading and writing to both native and non-native students, discusses basic differences and similarities affecting instruction for the two groups. For example, non-native linguistic differences encourage teachers to deal with syntactic interference in reading and with highly embedded…