This study examines the role of receptive vocabulary knowledge on outcomes of the TOEFL reading comprehension task. Participants included 18 native speakers of Spanish learning English as a foreign language and 17 native speakers of English ranging in age from 19-25 years. Lexical stimuli were presented auditorily and were divided into…

The present study primarily aims to investigate the relationship between Pakistani students' receptive vocabulary growth and their reading development at two different points: at the beginning and the end of English course. The standardized vocabulary size test (VST) and reading comprehension test (TOEFL) were administered to 123 first year…

This study investigated the effects of processing three types of texts, namely expository texts, narrative texts, and a combination of both known as twin texts, on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention in L2 learners. College freshmen (N = 109), who were lower to upper intermediate learners of English, were assigned into a control group…

Analytical writing poses particularly challenging, yet often overlooked, language demands that need attention in educational research and practice. In this article, I discuss the Core Analytical Language Skills (CALS) construct and its relevance for school reading and writing. CALS refer to the set of learners' school-relevant language resources…

The article presents an empirical study that investigates the single- and cross-modality relationships between different dimensions of receptive vocabulary knowledge and language skills, as well as the importance of academic vocabulary knowledge in academic listening and reading comprehension. An Updated Vocabulary Levels Test (UVLT), a Vietnamese…

Although non-native English speakers have been defined as a single distinct group in the most research literature, it has been relatively recently argued that they extensively vary in socio-cultural background, socio-economic status (SES), and parental education background wherein they grow cognitively. The present research, therefore, was…

In this multi-year study, we taught English/Language Arts teachers of students with learning disabilities in middle school to incorporate 15 min of daily vocabulary activities with students in their intact special education English/Language Arts classes. During Year 1, teachers taught 48 words to their sixth grade students, who learned and…

Vocabulary's relationship to reading proficiency is frequently cited as a justification for the assessment of L2 written receptive vocabulary knowledge. However, to date, there has been relatively little research regarding which modalities of vocabulary knowledge have the strongest correlations to reading proficiency, and observed differences have…

Although metaphors are essential tools in everyday communication and educational settings, the literature lacks evidence of effective training tools to promote metaphor comprehension in typical development. Grounding in theoretical pragmatics, we developed a novel metaphor comprehension training (MetaCom) for school-age children that focuses on…

In this multi-year study, we taught English/Language Arts teachers of students with Learning Disabilities in middle school to incorporate 15 minutes of daily vocabulary activities with students in their intact special education English/Language Arts classes. During Year 1, teachers taught 48 words to their sixth grade students, who learned and…

Mid-adolescence is a period of considerable potential growth in the language for academic writing. Yet, to date, few writing studies explore language development during this period and even fewer focus on longitudinal or diverse samples. In this study, we examined the development of language skills for academic writing in a socio-economically…

This study examined the incidental acquisition of English prepositions by Arabic-speaking English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. Employing reading comprehension exercises as a treatment, we adopted the experimental design of a pre- and post-test to determine the effectiveness of the treatment on the participants' incidental acquisition of…

This article presents evidence for a validity argument on the ACTFL Assessment of Performance Toward Proficiency in Languages (AAPPL) tests (Interpersonal Listening/Speaking, Presentational Writing, Interpretive Listening, and Interpretive Reading) by summarizing an analysis of the 2014 test data from examinations administered in three languages…

Two experiments examined Czech children's comprehension of grammatical number marking in verbs. Children were presented with picture pairs involving one or multiple participants in the same action, and were asked to point to the picture described by a recorded sentence. Experiment 1 (N = 72, age 3;0-4;7) tested four types of sentences, some of…

Placement and screening tests serve important functions, not only with regard to placing learners at appropriate levels of language courses but also with a view to maximizing the effectiveness of administering test batteries. We examined two widely reported formats suitable for these purposes, the discrete decontextualized Yes/No vocabulary test…