Choosing which words to teach is a key consideration for language teachers and materials writers. Some studies have shown that teaching words in semantically related clusters can make learning more difficult. However, others argue it is the physical similarity of the referents of words that causes confusion. Importantly, studies have employed…

This longitudinal study investigated parents' different pretend play behaviors (substitution, animation, and role enactment) to their infants during free play and the bidirectional links with infants' vocabulary development at 14 months (Time-1: N = 34, M[subscript age] = 14.23 months) and 20 months (Time-2: N = 34, M[subscript age] = 20.33…

This study investigates translation strategies that enhance idea generation and linguistic construction in early childhood composing, focusing on high language-growth prekindergarten to first-grade classrooms. Our sample included 28 teachers from two under-resourced districts in the Northeastern United States, serving 324 children. Using an…

Around twenty thousand adult learners enrol onto Welsh language classes each year, but many do not progress beyond "Mynediad level" (= Entry, CEFR A1). The study reported here explored techniques to maintain early learning momentum, maximise learners' returns for their learning efforts, and accelerate initial vocabulary acquisition.…

Studies into the role of audiovisual input and captions (i.e., subtitles in the same language as the audio) for L2 learning have shown that such input can positively influence L2 learners' acquisition of lexical items. Few studies have explored the effects of captioning on learners' capacity to segment the speech stream. This study investigates…

This qualitative study investigates collocational awareness among instructors of Turkish as a Foreign/Second Language (TFSL), focusing on how regular collocation-focused activities influence their teaching practices. While the study was conducted in the Teaching Turkish as a Second Language (TSL) context at a private university in Türkiye, the…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop an accurate test scale for vocabulary comprehension ability applicable to Mandarin-speaking preschool children aged 3-5. Methods: First, an initial scale was developed and evaluated using the expert consultation method. Subsequently, 490 typically developing 3-5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children…

Vocabulary knowledge plays a critical role in supporting text comprehension and broader learning across the school day. While school offers opportunities to build vocabulary knowledge, studies have shown that very little time is devoted to vocabulary instruction at the elementary level. This may be, in part, because educators commonly report being…

This paper is part 4 in a series of workshops that examine the properties of some simple models of vocabulary networks. This Workshop explores how the overall activity level of a vocabulary network can be altered by changing the connections in the network (i.e., by implementing relinking events). The Workshop is linked to an online practice room…

The speech register that adults especially caregivers use when interacting with infants and toddlers, that is, infant-directed speech (IDS) or baby talk, has been reported to facilitate language development throughout the early years. However, the neural mechanisms as well as why IDS results in such a developmental faciliatory effect remain to be…

Auditory stimuli that are relevant to a listener have the potential to capture focal attention even when unattended, the listener's own name being a particularly effective stimulus. We report two experiments to test the attention-capturing potential of the listener's own name in normal speech and time-compressed speech. In Experiment 1, 39…

Background and aims: Current evidence shows that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) benefit from spaced retrieval during word learning activities. Word recall is quite good relative to recall with alternative word learning procedures. However, recall on an absolute basis can be improved further; many studies report that fewer than…

The purpose of this study was to compare three intervention conditions in virtual rapid word learning instruction for young children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH): traditional, general physical activity, and semantic richness physical activity. We focused on an initial step in learning a new word: mapping a word form to a referent.…

Purpose: This study examined how mothers' question-asking behavior relates to their child's syntactic skills. One important aspect of maternal question-asking behavior is the use of complex questions when speaking with children. These questions can differ based on both their purpose and structure. The purpose may be to seek out information, to…

This study investigates how neural networks address the properties of children's linguistic knowledge, with a focus on the "Agent-First" strategy in comprehension of an active transitive construction in Korean. We develop various neural-network models and measure their classification performance on the test stimuli used in a behavioural…