This dissertation explores clear speech which is defined as a specific speaking style people adopt when fluent communication could be compromised for various reasons. Although acoustic properties and their perceptual benefits of clear speech produced by monolingual speakers of English are well documented, there has only been a small body of past…

Listening to academic lectures in a second language (L2) can be a daunting task, as the listener faces various challenges related to processing the speech stream, prioritizing the importance of information, and deciding when, where and how to take notes. A host of factors can contribute to student comfort in and ability to take "good"…

The Simple View of Reading (SVR), which posits that reading comprehension is the product of decoding and linguistic comprehension, has been studied extensively with school-age readers. However, little is known about the intricacies of the SVR for adults who struggle with reading. This study addresses notable gaps in this literature, including the…

The Simple View of Reading (SVR), which posits that reading comprehension is the product of decoding and linguistic comprehension, has been studied extensively with school-age readers. However, little is known about the intricacies of the SVR for adults who struggle with reading. The current study addresses notable gaps in this literature,…

Our qualitative case study aimed to identify how four second-grade emergent bilingual students and their teacher engaged with listening comprehension during interactive read-aloud discussions with more and less culturally relevant books, and how this intersected with the teacher's use of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogical tenets. Data…

Concerns about the need for assessing multidialectal listening skills for global contexts are becoming increasingly prevalent. However, the inclusion of multiple accents on listening assessments may threaten test fairness because it is not practical to include every accent that may be encountered in the language use domain on these tests. Given…

The present study investigated Korean-accented English (KoE) intelligibility and conducted experiments in Korea, Japan, and the USA to test the benefits of listener's familiarity and identify the key phonological features of KoE. In the experiments, the participants were asked to transcribe the target (KoE) of 100 English statements each…

This research compared the contributions of lexical inferencing, decoding, and listening comprehension to reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking learners of English as a second language (ESL) enrolled in university bridging programs in the U.S. and Chinese-speaking university learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in mainland China.…

Understanding how members of different cultures perceive and process listening is fundamental to the enhancement of cross-cultural communication. This exploratory study is the first to compare Iranian students with U.S. students regarding their perceptions of their own listening competence using Brownell's HURIER Listening Profile. The study's…

In what ways do native language (NL) speakers and foreign language (FL) learners differ in understanding the same messages delivered with or without gestures? To answer this question, seventh- and eighth-grade NL and FL learners of English in the United States and Norway were shown a video of a speaker describing, in English, a cartoon image that…

Comprehension is a crucial academic skill that is necessary for independent living. Unfortunately many children with autism often exhibit difficulties being able to interpret and comprehend written language. There is limited research on effective comprehension practices to enhance the comprehension development of children with autism. Therefore,…

Using nationally-representative, longitudinal data on a cohort of Spanish-speaking English language learners in the U.S., this study investigated the extent to which early oral language proficiency in Spanish and English predicts later levels and rates of growth in English reading. Latent growth models indicated that both Spanish and English…

Universities and colleges in the United States require international graduate students to provide certain English proficiency documents along with their admission applications before they are admitted to their programs. This study explored the language challenges faced by international graduate students at a Southern university in the U.S. The…

The theme for the 62nd annual conference of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers was Educating for a Just Society. Connie Briggs, previous Program Chair, reminded us that, "Education has always been the foundation of a democratic nation. It is important that our students understand the principles upon which our nation was…

This study examined the effectiveness of a pilot program utilizing practice standardized test questions for 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders in an economically disadvantaged school and evaluated the impact of the pilot program on pre- and post-test practice tests in language arts literacy and on the 2009 New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge…