Based on an analysis of three literacy events in nursery schools, this article focuses on how literacy forms part of children's social practices and co-creates the language environment in the nursery and how place, affect and materiality play a key role in children's multimodal and embodied meaning-making around literacy. The analysis is based on…

Spoken words vary phonetically along a number of dimensions, such as duration, pitch, and vowel quality. Much of this variation is associated with social factors like the dialect, age, or gender of the speaker -- a type of variation termed 'socio-indexical'. Traditional theories of speech perception have seen this socio-indexical variation as a…

We compared 2 learning methods for the acquisition of vocabulary in a second language (L2). In addition, the use of the new L2 words was evaluated both in isolation and within sentences. In the semantic method, L2 words and pictures denoting their meanings were presented and participants learned by practicing a semantic categorization task (to…

Purpose: The purpose of this tutorial is to explain key concepts about vocabulary acquisition and instruction and to translate research from middle school vocabulary interventions into practice recommendations for practitioners. In this tutorial, we consider the relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension, describe vocabulary…

The strategy underlying most computational models of word reading is to specify the organization of the reading system--its architecture and the processes and representations it employs--and to demonstrate that this organization would give rise to the behavior observed in word reading tasks. This approach fails to adequately address the variation…

We investigated whether cross-language activation is sensitive to shifting language demands and language experience during first and second language (i.e., L1, L2) reading. Experiment 1 consisted of L1 French-L2 English bilinguals reading in the L2, and Experiment 2 consisted of L1 English-L2 French bilinguals reading in the L1. Both groups read…

Although much is known about the representation and processing of concrete concepts, knowledge of what abstract semantics might be is severely limited. In this article we first address the adequacy of the 2 dominant accounts (dual coding theory and the context availability model) put forward in order to explain representation and processing…

The theme for this year's College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa was "Engaged Language Research and Practice," with the plenary speech given by Dr. Kathryn A. Davis. Following a preface from the editors and plenary speaker highlights, contents of these proceedings include: Section I:…

Points out that children must master a great deal of information about form classes, written conventions, and word referent relationships in order to understand what teachers mean when they use the term "word." (FL)

Two studies examined the relationship between word knowledge and reading comprehension. Subjects were college undergraduates with high and low verbal abilities as indicated by a standardized verbal aptitude test. The first study involved a multiple choice vocabulary test from which words that both groups defined correctly were selected. The…

These short summaries of the reports from the National Institute of Education's Conference on Studies in Reading are intended to reflect accurately the general areas of research recommended by each of the 10 panels taking part in the conference. Each panel focused on a particular problem in reading, identifying general approaches, suggesting…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 27 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the vocalization of /L/ in Philadelphia; (2) a second grade program to isolate and apply knowledge of vowel sounds in word identification; (3) phoneme and…

Following a brief review of the literature on cognates, and a discussion of six arguments in favor of using cognates as a vocabulary acquisition device, a study is described which was designed to determine whether students were able to utilize English-French cognates in listening and reading comprehension in French. Seventy-four tenth grade…