This dissertation focuses on the acquisition of the English verbal "be"--passive and the interaction between the lexical meaning of a verb and young children's observed behavior with the verb in the passive. Specifically, I investigate how children exploit lexical semantic information from their input in order to learn which verbs can…

This teaching tip identifies ways to "WIN" at vocabulary learning. Specifically, the approach conveys three morphological strategies in the mnemonic "WIN." These three strategies remind students to find smaller units of meaning within bigger words, look for those units in other words that they know, and notice the context. Each…

Students' knowledge of vocabulary affects their reading comprehension. Despite abundant research findings in vocabulary learning, practical instructional methods for use in schools are typically underdeveloped. This article proposes a research-based method for teaching the meanings of base academic vocabulary (i.e., Tier 2) words. The method…

The goal of the research was to examine executive functioning and figurative language comprehension among students with learning disabilities as compared to students without learning disabilities. As part of the research, we examined 20 students with learning disabilities and 21 students with no learning disabilities, both groups of students…

Children with hearing loss who are developing spoken language tend to lag behind children with normal hearing in vocabulary knowledge. Thus, researchers must validate instructional practices that lead to improved vocabulary outcomes for children with hearing loss. The purpose of this study was to investigate how semantic richness of instruction…

This project examined the words selected for instruction from fourth-grade English/Language Arts (ELA) and science programs with the goal of describing the unique words in these two text types. Seven features of the words were established: (a) length, (b) frequency, (c) frequency of a word's morphological family, (d) familiarity, (e) dispersion…

Students need a strong foundation in reading, writing, math, and numeracy to be successful in GED preparation, in work readiness programs, and in post-secondary education and training. The resources in the Basic Skills Collection that will assist in providing this foundation include research articles, materials and curriculum based on research,…

Ideally, one's talk segues into ways the precision of crafted phrases or stylized sentences amplifies messages, sharpens concerns, or frames praise. People pursue how words and their selective combinations illuminate and illustrate, persuade and perplex. For many, this intricate puzzle with language is a frolic, simple wordplay. In this article,…

Stating that teachers are often confused by the terms "homonym" and "homophone," this paper maintains that the difficulty can be eased by determining how words can be classified in terms of structure, meaning, or sound. It then presents a word nomenclature model that draws upon the differentiation between these groups of words…

Suggests several ways to encourage students' awareness and use in writing of the variant meanings of words. (TO)

Points out what children's stories reveal about the significance of the individual word. (DD)

This study examined the influence of semantic consistency (meaningfulness) and anomaly on the learning of three types of syntactic pairs. The results showed that meaningful pairs are learned with fewer errors than anomalous pairs. (Author)

A major task of teachers at all levels is to help students recognize that a great number of the words in our language have many meanings and that a particular word often conveys different meanings to different persons. (Author)

Describes a model that distinguishes seven types of meaning that can function in reading: discoursal, lexical, morphological, propositional, syntactic, rhetorical, and functional. (MKM)

Gives sample sentences showing the connection between grammatical and lexical semantic relationships, which present a complicated set of directions and rules for the learner. Methods are suggested for differentiating by category the meanings of ambiguous words. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)