The effect of neighborhood density on optional infinitives was evaluated for typically developing (TD) children and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Forty children, twenty in each group, completed two production tasks that assessed third person singular production. Half of the sentences in each task presented a dense verb, and…

Introduction: The present study provides description of two typologically diverse languages in origin (Slavic vs. Latin), script (Cyrillic vs. Roman), and internal structure. One of the similarities, between the two studied orthographies is that spelling-sound transparency is quite consistent in both languages. The goal of the present study was to…

Coaching is mainly purposed to build teacher capacity to enhance the success of learning and the quality of education in general. This paper is aimed at describing the coaching materials, methods, and the effectiveness of coaching in English Foreign Language (EFL) learning to strengthen the teachers' pedagogical competence. Six Junior High School…

In this study, we examined the bilingual language development among Korean American first-graders in two southern California cities and explored the opportunities for language use available to them in various spaces: at school (one dual language immersion school and one traditional English-only public school), at home, and in the community. Data…

Using a nationally representative sample of dual language learners (DLLs) attending Head Start, this study investigated how the language used for instruction and the proportion of DLLs in the class was associated with English and Spanish receptive vocabulary development between the fall and spring (n = 531). Based on teacher report of the language…

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Standards emphasizes the integration of Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities within teaching. "Content-enriched instruction" aims at teaching linguistic forms within content and eases the implementation of the five Cs. The focus is at beginning levels…

In the report presented here, the authors describe a pilot intervention study that was intended to teach children with visual impairments the meaning of far-away words, and that used their mothers as mediators. The aim was to teach both labels and deep word knowledge, which is the comprehension of the full meaning of words, illustrated through…

This article overviews research on second language vocabulary instruction with a specific focus on semantic and thematic vocabulary-clustering types. The theoretical benefits associated with both the semantic and thematic approaches, as well as the potential problems associated with them, are discussed. The conclusion drawn is that reinforcing the…

Reading is critical for scientific thinking. It is a foundation for many of the skills in which scientists and engineers must be proficient, such as conducting research, developing informed conjectures, and engaging in reasoned argument (NRC 2012). Yet, students frequently find science reading difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating. Strategies…

Series of international studies have shown that subtitled television programs provide a rich context for foreign language acquisition. This study investigated whether incidental language acquisition occurs from watching a television program with/without subtitles. Children in the experimental conditions watch: (a) a 15 minute snapshot of a well…

Developing a large and rich vocabulary is central to learning to read. Children must know the words that make up written texts in order to understand them, especially as the vocabulary demands of content-related materials increase in the upper grades. Studies have documented that the size of a person's vocabulary is strongly related to how…

Students from Turkish-speaking families are the largest minority language group in Germany. Yet, little is known about this group's literacy development. Using data from a 3-year longitudinal study, we examined whether the same base reading skills are involved in early reading comprehension of 100 Turkish-German bilingual and 69 German monolingual…

Dynamic analyses of language growth tell us how vocabulary and grammar develop and how the two might be intertwined. Analyses of growth curves between 17 and 42 months, based on longitudinal data for 34 children, revealed interesting patterns of vocabulary and grammatical developments. They showed that these patterns were nonlinear, but with…

Research with monolingual children has shown that early efficiency in real-time word recognition predicts later language and cognitive outcomes. In parallel research with young bilingual children, processing ability and vocabulary size are closely related within each language, although not across the two languages. For children in dual-language…

Incidental word learning is influenced by context, task, and reader characteristics. The present study aimed to determine the contribution and interactions of these factors for fifth-grade students. The focus was on contextual differences: words' meanings are inferred from local or global contexts. This effect was tested as a function of task: gap…