The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of African American children's oral language skills with the intention of building the understanding of how these skills translate to classroom contexts. The chapter also summarizes the goals of the Common Core that are specifically related to speaking and listening and describes how African…

The consolidation of smartphones as dominant devices for access to digital information and entertainment has redefined the processes of production and commercialization of cultural communication industries. The nature of these screens, which prioritize the visual content over the sound, decisively influences distribution strategies in the audio…

Researchers have evaluated the effects of repeated reading and listening-while-reading interventions on oral reading fluency and comprehension, and have compared the effects of these two interventions on indirect measures of comprehension. The current study was designed to extend this research by evaluating and comparing the effects of these two…

This study investigated age differences in the utilization of visually contrastive information (i.e., differently colored identical objects) for temporary referential ambiguity resolution during spoken sentence comprehension. Five- and 6-year-old Japanese children and adults listened to sentences that contained a color adjective-noun combination…

In this study, the process of learning Turkish as a foreign language by watching TV series was analysed. It is a qualitative based study with document analysis, case study and mixed research design. The case study is based on the analysis of data obtained from 44 citizens of the Republic of Kosovo who have learned Turkish by watching TV series.…

The aim of the current research is to investigate the relationship between the attitudes and motivation of EFL learners and their willingness to listen (WTL); possible effects of age and gender on EFL learners' WTL, attitude and motivation. A quantitative study was designed in which 239 participants, intermediate level EFL learners at a public…

Listening is a fundamental and challenging component of second language learning. To decrease its difficulty, Advance Organizer activities (pre-listening supports) can be used leading to more effective listening and better comprehension. This study aimed to investigate the effects of three different Advance Organizers (AOs), i.e. pre-teaching key…

In general, teacher educators are considered to be educational specialists whose main task is to communicate content-based concepts to prospective teachers. However, unfortunately, most studies on teacher professional development overlook this specific language-oriented aspect of content-based teaching. Therefore, we address the aforementioned…

One of the challenges in teaching a foreign language is: finding appropriate ways to enable students to develop their reading fluency and comprehension. Repeated reading and listening-while-reading are two significant strategies that enhance students' fluency and comprehension. This study aimed to develop fluency and comprehension of EFL college…

Shared-book reading is a well-established intervention to foster vocabulary development. Factors influencing its effectiveness are, however, less well studied, particularly with regard to story-delivery. We contrasted a read-aloud with a free storytelling approach and tested effects on vocabulary learning. In the first study, 83 preschoolers aged…

Captions and subtitles as a form of scaffolding for audiovisual materials has gained much attention in second or foreign language (L2) learning in recent years and various studies report their positive effects on learners' listening comprehension. However, few attempts have been made to investigate how textual information specifically affects the…

To learn to produce speech, infants must effectively monitor and assess their own speech output. Yet very little is known about how infants perceive speech produced by an infant, which has higher voice pitch and formant frequencies compared to adult or child speech. Here, we tested whether pre-babbling infants (at 4-6 months) prefer listening to…

Duolingo is a commercial language-teaching platform that offers free courses on the web and on mobile apps. This study reports the ACTFL listening and reading proficiency levels of adult Duolingo learners who had completed beginning-level courses in Spanish or French. The participants (n = 225) were learners residing in the United States, had…

Because teaching is an inherently political act, it is important for music teacher educators to consider their role in the public discourse and how they approach the political dimensions of teaching with future music educators. In this interest article, we offer a theoretical basis for engaging preservice music teachers in critical reflection and…

Developing technology has significantly affected the education and training process as it is in all areas of life. In today's society, smart phones, tablets and computers which almost every individual owns have facilitated access to information, and besides classical teaching methods, technology-supported or technology-based education activities…