This study aims to investigate the nature of phonological awareness in young L3 learners, and the extent to which it changes over time as L2 and L3 learning progresses. Two groups of 12 closely matched multilinguals (total= 24, aged 12-13), who shared their L2 (English) but their L1/L3 (German/Polish) were mirrored, mimicked L2 and L3 accents in…

This study investigates for the first time the comprehension of rhetorical questions (RhQs) in bilingual children. RhQs are non-canonical questions, as they are not used to request information, but to express the speaker's belief that the answer is already obvious. This special pragmatic meaning often arises by means of specific prosodic and…

This study tested the effects of hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned French words on the pronunciation of these words by 7- to 8-year-old Catalan children. In a short training experiment with a pre- and posttest design, 28 children either repeated cognate words in French (e.g. French "aspirateur," Catalan "aspirador"…

Intercultural studies have underexplored the issue of children's theatre as a tool for symbolic representations of (new, hybrid) identities. In this paper, I analyze two theatrical productions addressing both Spanish society and Romanian diaspora (first/second generation) to answer these questions: how are diasporic identities re-constructed in…

The Sylheti Bangla, a variety of Bangla language is primarily spoken in the Sylhet District of Bangladesh, Barak Valley of Assam, Tripura, especially in North Tripura. The systematic perusal on English spoken by Sylheti Bangla speakers demonstrates that it carries a huge difference with English (RP) specially in respect to pronunciation, syllable…

Language classroom interactions can be characterized as multimodal, since teachers may resort to a variety of resources provided by their body or by their immediate space in order to convey meaning, manage activities and assess pupils' performances. Furthermore, teachers' multimodal practices constitute an essential component for the…

This study examined the roles of first-language (L1) Chinese and second-language (L2) English phonological skills in English and Chinese reading comprehension, respectively, and their association with reading comprehension difficulties among Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children. We tested 258 second graders on nonverbal intelligence,…

This study critically explored Filipino third graders' fluency in science to determine their readiness to comprehend and understand fourth level science, which is taught in English. This mixed design case research purposively sampled 30 third graders from a government-owned elementary school. An oral reading technique using a pre-selected science…

This paper reports on an intervention study with young Polish beginners (mean age: 8 years, 3 months) learning English at school. It seeks to identify whether exposure to rhythmic input improves knowledge of word order and function words. The "prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis", relevant in developmental psycholinguistics, provided the…

A 4-stage developmental model, in which auditory sensitivity is fully mediated by speech perception at both the segmental and suprasegmental levels, which are further related to word reading through their associations with phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal short-term memory and morphological awareness, was tested with…

This study examined oral reading fluency (ORF) of bilingual and monolingual students. The author selected a sample of 510 (258 males and 252 females) native Arabic-speaking sixth-graders (62 bilinguals and 448 monolinguals) in Egypt. The purposes were; (a) to examine oral reading rate, oral reading accuracy, prosody, and oral reading comprehension…

In contemporary South Korean society, there is a strong emphasis on cultural homogeneity and, simultaneously, the development of English proficiency as a human resource. Since language is inextricably linked to identity, bilingual learners from English speaking countries may feel pressure to conform to Korean cultural and linguistic norms, leading…