The pronunciation of a word represented in an alphabetic writing system (such as this one) is relatively transparent--but a language's sounds change over time and vary across space, while its spellings remain relatively static, resulting in some amount of divergence between the written and spoken forms. The introduction of loanwords and…

This dissertation is about Chinese loanwords. It is mainly divided into two parts. Part I is a general discussion about loanwords in Chinese; Chapter I and II belong to the first part. Part II is a discussion about the analyses of Mandarin loanwords originating from English. Chapter III, IV, and V are all related to the second part. Chapter VI is…

Studies by Moats (1995), Mather, Bos, and Babur (2001), and McCutchen, et al (2002) have begun to identify the relationship between teachers' linguistic knowledge and what is known, scientifically, about how literacy is acquired by learners. Findings from these studies support the idea that linguistic knowledge--particularly knowledge of…

The purpose of this study was to identify relationships that exist between reading ability in 3rd grade and phonological awareness in kindergarten. A second purpose was to identify specific prereading skills that best predict later reading success. This study used a quantitative research design to answer the research questions posed. The…

Young children with autism often are identified as experiencing problems in language, social, and behavioral development. Current research typically focuses on these three areas with little attention paid to the academic learning of these children. Because of this, young children with autism often do not engage in typical early literacy…

More than one third of American children cannot read at a basic level by fourth grade (Lee, Grigg, & Donahue, 2007) and those numbers are even higher for African American, Hispanic and poor White students (Boorman et al., 2007). These are alarming statistics given that the ability to read is the most basic and fundamental skill for academic…

Foreign language lyric diction is a compulsory subject in all undergraduate vocal performance degrees in universities. However, the effectiveness of its teaching depends on the capacity of students to absorb the material, for which many are largely unprepared, due to their lack of previous language study. Further, native speakers of North American…