Examining the dimensionality of oral discourse language skills in early childhood is crucial in informing theories of language and literacy development. This study examined the factor structure of linguistic and discourse features in oral text production for second graders. A total of 330 English-speaking second graders (M[subscript age] = 7.33,…

Examining the dimensionality of oral discourse language skills in early childhood is crucial in informing theories of language and literacy development. This study examined the factor structure of linguistic and discourse features in oral text production for second graders. A total of 330 English-speaking second graders (M[subscript age]= 7.33,…

Oral language is the primary means through which a child controls, describes, organises, and evaluates their life experiences and their ability to use oral language which effectively impacts their future literacy development. Currently, the world is awash with dynamic change and constant disruption. These include natural disasters such as the…

Teacher classroom instructional practice can be a powerful influence on student learning. The Classroom Promotion of Oral Language randomized controlled trial tested whether teacher professional learning focused on promoting oral language in classrooms could improve teacher knowledge and classroom instruction. This study focuses on evaluating the…

This study examined how children and adolescents with Williams syndrome (WS; ages 8 years, 0 months [8;0]-14;5) used referential devices (determiners and pronouns), tense, and connectives to create cohesion in oral narratives based on a storybook compared to typically developing mentally and chronologically age-matched children. WS children used…

The reading underachievement of African American (AA) school-age children has received considerable attention in educational circles. Unfortunately, there are relatively few studies designed to uncover the source or sources of these reading achievement differences, especially in children beyond early elementary grades. Some studies suggest that…

Purpose: The authors created a database of expository oral language samples with the aims of describing the nature of students' expository discourse and providing benchmark data for typically developing preteen and teenage students. Method: Using a favorite game or sport protocol, language samples were collected from 235 typically developing…

During the last decade, researchers of foreign language pedagogy have become increasingly interested in the "language-literature divide" (Donato and Brooks 2004). The purpose of the current study is to contribute to this growing body of research by investigating the extent to which whole class discussions in three third-year…

Curent national curicula, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, and EFL materials highlight the importance of the students' development of oral skils. This study stems from a cros-sectional survey of the teaching of oral skils in Secondary Education in a Spanish local context (Aragón) caried out in 2012 on both teachers and…

We report on a study that used observations, conversations, and formal interviews to explore literacy instruction in 24 lower-primary classrooms in coastal Kenya. Specifically, we report the ways literacy instruction is delivered and how that delivery aligns with practices understood to promote reading acquisition. We find (1) prioritization of…

The present study aimed to investigate the contribution of oral language skills, linguistic skills, and transcription skills to Chinese written composition among Grade 4 students in Hong Kong. Measures assessing verbal working memory, oral language skills, linguistic skills (i.e., syntactic skills and discourse skills), transcription skills (i.e.,…

This article is devoted to the linguistic, communicative and sociocultural situation in branches of multinational companies located in the Czech Republic and Hungary. There are typically several languages used in these branches. In addition to the local languages, there are the languages of the parent companies--most commonly English or German,…

In Japanese, self-qualification, or a qualifying segment of talk that reduces the force of the speaker's own utterances, is frequently introduced with contrastive markers, such as "demo," "kedo," and "ga." This study explores the relationship between the grammatical and pragmatic competence of Japanese L2 learners by examining their use of such…

Concepts that deal with various aspects of communicative success, or "success concepts," include grammaticality, acceptability, appropriateness, and interpretability. Because different grammarians espouse different ideas of correctness, grammaticality, defined as the relation between an utterance and a grammatical description of its language, must…

Communicative oral language tests have claimed high content validity, but have also elicited concern that the assessment scales are based on theory with little empirical justification. A new approach to construct validity can be found in discourse analysis, which could lead to the development of new communicative discourse tests in all skills. (CB)