Connectives such as "because" and "but" are crucial for signaling coherence relations in discourse. They contribute to a better reading comprehension and, thus, academic performance. The aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of connective development during teenage years by studying individual differences in…

Research on the implementation of CLIL at the onset of primary school is limited and has largely overlooked the role of other sources of individual differences. This study investigated the effects of the CLIL approach to English learning, together with the effects of out-of-school exposure to the language through media and other sources of…

The present study investigates the effect of task repetition and individual differences on Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' lexical use and fluency in oral task performance. The study adopts a within-subjects design with forty students performing the same narrative task twice. Students also completed two prior vocabulary…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to determine how various aspects of cognition predict speech recognition ability across different levels of speech vocoding within a single group of listeners. Method: We tested the ability of young adults (N = 32) with normal hearing to recognize Perceptually Robust English Sentence Test Open-set (PRESTO)…

Conventional folk wisdom insists study abroad is an inherently valuable educational experience for young people. While traditional study abroad programs were typically a semester or a full year in duration, short-term study abroad programs of only a couple weeks are now the most common type of sojourn abroad. Problematically, evidence is mounting…

This study compares the performance of native speakers and adult second language (L2) learners on tasks tapping proficiency in grammar, vocabulary, and collocations. In addition, data were collected on several predictors of individual differences in linguistic attainment, including some related to language experience (print exposure, education,…

This study aims to investigate whether emotional and behavioral difficulties (EBD) differ between children with cochlear implants (CIs) or hearing aids (HAs), according to multi-informant ratings. Methods: A battery of psychological measures (e.g., Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA),…

Comprehensive models of derived polymorphemic word recognition skill in developing readers, with an emphasis on children with reading difficulty (RD), have not been developed. The purpose of the present study was to model individual differences in polymorphemic word recognition ability at the item level among 5th-grade children (N = 173)…

The current study examined the effects of text-based relational (i.e., cohesion), propositional-specific (i.e., lexical), and syntactic features in a source text on subsequent integration of the source text in spoken responses. It further investigated the effects of word integration on human ratings of speaking performance while taking into…

The current study longitudinally examined the influence of aptitude on second language (L2) pronunciation development when 40 first-year Japanese university students engaged in practice activities inside and outside English-as-a-Foreign-Language classrooms over one academic year. Spontaneous speech samples were elicited at the beginning, middle,…

This inquiry analyzed the relationships between individual differences and gains made in oral proficiency of adult, second language learners of Spanish during one semester studying abroad. Oral proficiency was measured using a pre/post-SA Computerized Oral Proficiency Instrument (COPI, CAL, 2009). Gain scores were correlated with two cognitive…

Students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are at a greatly increased risk of poor academic outcomes. Understanding the factors that influence their attainment is a crucial first step towards developing more effective provision. In the current study we present a multi-level, natural variation analysis which highlights…

This study investigated whether semantic information presented along with novel printed nonwords facilitates orthographic learning and examined predictors of individual differences in this important literacy skill. A sample of 35 fourth graders was tested on a variety of language and literacy tests, and participants were then exposed to 10 target…

Drawing on recent psychological and neurological research on how individual differences might interact with learning a particular language, the study examines how psycholinguistic research and theory can help in assigning military personnel to language training and to a given language. Using the Defense Language Institute's Defense Language…