The pervasive use of information and computer technology in second or foreign language learning has led researchers to explore the ideal tasks for technological environments to facilitate second language (L2) learning. This study intended to contribute new knowledge to this area by examining the effects of the task complexity manipulated along the…

The present study reports a large, cross-sectional study of Mandarin-speaking children's ability to compute quantity implicatures. To chart the developmental trajectory of this pragmatic ability, we tested 225 Mandarin-speaking children aged 4-8 years on their interpretations of scalar and non-scalar implicatures, as well as numerals. Scalar…

We conducted a skills analysis on written expression curriculum-based measurement (WE-CBM) tasks completed by 117 second-grade students. As part of the skills analysis, we scored two WE-CBM tasks (i.e., narrative and expository) for correct and incorrect writing sequences, common writing errors, and sentence structures. Although a majority of…

The article analyses the problems arising in teaching English at a technical university, offers and describes a new integrated method of teaching listening, reading and speaking called the Communicative Circle method. The development of the pragmatic, integrated method of Communicative Circle builds upon the linguo-didactic, integrated, and…

Background and aims: The purpose of the current exploratory study was to describe the inferential narrative comprehension skills of young school-age children on the autism spectrum who, as a group, are at high risk of significant and persistent reading comprehension difficulties. Our aim was to investigate whether the anticipated difficulties in…

Self-assessment has been used to assess second language proficiency; however, as sources of measurement errors vary, they may threaten the validity and reliability of the tools. The present paper investigated the role of experiences in using Japanese as a second language in the naturalistic acquisition context on the accuracy of the…

Fluent reading hinges on automatic word recognition, yet little research has investigated the acquisition process with repeated exposure to novel words. In this study, elementary students in grades three to six were asked to read two-syllable pseudowords five times each (in varied sequences) during two sessions (n = 49). The goal was to study…

The nature of the message used by children, 4 1/2 and 6 1/2 year-old, was studied in a spatial description task. Speaker and listener were separated from one another by an opaque screen, and had to exchange information. Speaker were asked to describe a board showing eight objects placed in a room, and listeners were instructed to draw a similar…