This article reports the results of an experiment designed to investigate the effectiveness of pinyin (a phonic transcription system) in learning vocabulary of Chinese as a second language from the perspective of cognitive load theory. In the reported experiment, the learning effects of the vertical and horizontal layouts of characters, pinyin,…

Among 262 Chinese children, syllable awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) at age 5 years and invented spelling of Pinyin at age 6 years independently predicted subsequent Chinese character recognition and English word reading at ages 8 years and 10 years, even with initial Chinese character reading ability statistically controlled. In…

The word "living" is commonly used throughout elementary science lessons that focus on the biological world. It is a word teachers often take for granted when teaching life science concepts. How similar the constructed meaning of a common word like "living" is to the meaning intended by the teacher or instructional materials depends on how a…

Purpose: Sensitivity of subjective estimates of age of acquisition (AOA) and acquisition channel (AC; printed, spoken, signed) to differences in word exposure within and between populations that differ dramatically in perceptual experience was examined. Methods: Fifty participants with early-onset deafness and 50 participants with normal hearing…

Children who enter kindergarten with low oral language skills are at great risk for reading problems, especially in the areas of vocabulary and comprehension. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of two instructional vocabulary methods of storybook reading with children who exhibit typically developing language skills and…

Would you like your students to be excited when they read a new word and keen to work out its meaning straight away? This book will turn them into word detectives, ready to tackle any new word they come across. And when writing, would you like them to make sentences that have interesting and descriptive words like "shamble," "ravenous" or…

The purpose of this study was to determine the reading achievement effects of a school-year-long program of sustained silent reading in a middle school. Students' scores on the Stanford Achievement Test, Ninth Edition across three years (2006, 2007, and 2008) were analyzed to test eleven null hypotheses. A 3 x 3 repeated measures factorial ANOVA…

Learning a phonetic category (or any linguistic category) requires integrating different sources of information. A crucial unsolved problem for phonetic learning is how this integration occurs: how can we update our previous knowledge about a phonetic category as we hear new exemplars of the category? One model of learning is Bayesian Inference,…

This study examines the use of a yes/no test as a placement measure in a university Spanish foreign language program. Yes/no tests measure word recognition and have been shown to correlate well with other language proficiency tests. The main advantage of using a yes/no test as a placement tool is its ease of creation and administration. We…

The key question of how the brain codes the meaning of words and pictures is the focus of vigorous debate. Is there a "semantic hub" in the temporal poles where these different inputs converge to form amodal conceptual representations? Alternatively, are there distinct neural circuits that underpin our comprehension of pictures and words?…

In order to successfully complete any college-level courses, English Language Learner (ELL) students must be able to read and comprehend a large volume of academic information. However, many instructors are completely overwhelmed in teaching their respective subject areas and are academically unprepared to teach ELL students appropriate reading…

Children reported the strategies they used when identifying unfamiliar words while reading. Study 1 compared 39 poor readers (M age = 10 years, 7 months) with 2 groups of average readers, one of the same reading age (N = 39; M age = 8 years, 5 months) and the other (N = 31) matched on chronological age. Study 2 included 241 children aged 7 to 11…

English teachers face myriad demands every day that include not only helping students read literature in interesting and engaging ways but also attending to the needs of students challenged by the demands of more complex and sophisticated texts. Vocabulary learning is at the heart of this struggle for many students, especially for English language…

The influential report "Teaching Children to Read: An Evidenced-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction" presented recommendations for daily literacy instruction in five key areas: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Applying techniques to…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a conversation intervention including 500 min of linguistically and cognitively complex talk on the expressive vocabulary growth of prekindergarten children. Method: Children (N = 73) were randomly assigned to control or a 10-week experimental intervention condition. Twice…