Introduces a computer-assisted language-learning system called L2tutor that is designed to provide an immersion experience to travelers before they leave on a trip to a country where a different language is spoken. The learner takes part in a fully mixed-initiative dialog with the system to gain fluency and hone vocabulary and grammatical skills.…

Three employees with moderate mental retardation who were nonreaders were taught to use sight words to self-initiate job tasks in competitive employment settings. Training resulted in the ability to read job-specific sight words, to use verbalized self-instruction, to use a self-monitoring checklist, to self-initiate work tasks, and increased…

Presents the results of an evaluation of an experimental program designed to speed up the acquisition of Dutch by immigrant children in the Netherlands. In a longitudinal study that tracked both the experimental and a comparison group, both groups of children were pretested and posttested each year with curriculum-dependent and -independent…

Discusses the English Language Fellows (ELF) Program, a pilot project that pairs specially-trained, native-speaking undergraduates with nonnative-speaking (NNS) classmates to study the content of courses that both are taking together. Woven into that study of course content, for the benefit of the NNS students, is the study of language as it is…

The word-learning ability of 12 school-age subjects with moderate or severe mental retardation was assessed. Subjects used the System for Augmenting Language with visual-graphic symbols for communication. Ability to fast map novel symbols was found to relate to symbol achievement status. Implications for vocabulary acquisition by youth with mental…

Studied the relationship between modified oral input and the acquisition of word meanings by Japanese high school students. Results include a strong relationship between comprehension and word meaning acquisition was only evident in a test replicating learning format; and rate of word acquisition was faster with the premodified input. (54…

Explores whether there is a greater need for standard measures of vocabulary knowledge or for vocabulary measures tailored to learners' first languages using placement test data from more than 1,000 Francophone students entering English language courses at a francophone university in Montreal in 1997 and 1998. Shows that a standard vocabulary…

A study examined specific word- and sentence-level features most frequently used in the expository writing of 87 college students with learning disabilities, 50 with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, 58 with both disabilities, and 92 controls. Very high correlations were found between verbosity, quality, and lexical complexity. (Contains…

Outlines a stock market activity that has helped English for specific purposes students in business school learn technical vocabulary. The objective is to minimize confusion by using visuals with written and spoken words, and to find effective ways of promoting learning and generating motivation. (Author/VWL)

Investigated the effects on vocabulary acquisition of student participation in authoring a multimedia institutional module. Sixty-two subjects were randomly assigned to two groups, and each group was randomly assigned to one of two treatments. Showed evidence that students learn vocabulary significantly better when they participate in the creation…

We used a multiple baseline across students design to evaluate the effects of an intervention program consisting of vocabulary instruction, error correction, and fluency building on oral reading rate and comprehension of five English-language learners who were struggling readers in a primary school. During the first intervention condition (new…

Many authors have argued that word-learning constraints help guide a word-learner's hypotheses as to the meaning of a newly heard word. One such class of constraints derives from the observation that word-learners of all ages prefer to map novel labels to novel objects in situations of referential ambiguity. In this paper I use eye-tracking to…

Individual differences in measures of prereading skills and in questionnaire measures of 4-5-year-old twins' print environments in Australia, Scandinavia, and the United States were explored with a behavioral-genetic design. Modest phenotypic correlations were found between environmental measures and the twins' print knowledge, general verbal…

Using an ecological model, this study explored the effects of distal and proximal sources of influence on students' learning. We first examined three markers of teacher qualification--elementary education credential, years of education, and years of experience--on observed classroom practices across three dimensions--warmth/responsivity,…

A set of tri-zygotic quadruplets, three girls and one boy, participated in weekly observations from 1;2 to 1;10 (years;months), a period of transition from prelinguistic gesture to 50 words. In the study, one girl served as a genetic mate to her identical twin and a biological risk mate to her fraternal sister. The biological risk mates achieved…