This study compares integrated and isolated form-focused instruction for vocabulary development in an English as a second language (ESL) reading lesson. Two classes of ESL learners (N = 20) from a university preparation academic English course were involved in the study. Each class did two reading treatments in which they read an article and…

This longitudinal study investigated 196 Hispanic English learners' responses to an English instructional intervention from kindergarten to second grade. The effect of student gender was also examined as a secondary focus. The intervention consisted of ongoing professional development and structured and systematic English intervention during an…

Major innovations are becoming available for research in language development and disorders. Among these innovations, recent tools allow naturalistic recording in children's homes and automated analysis to facilitate representative sampling. This study employed all-day recordings during the 2nd year of life in a child exposed to three languages,…

Children from immigrant, low-income families in the Netherlands start school with a limited vocabulary in the language of instruction; therefore, this places them at risk for developing reading difficulties. Exposure to books is assumed to reduce their 2nd language (L2) vocabulary disadvantage. In this experiment, we examined the effects of video…

The effects of a voluntary summer reading intervention with and without a parent training component were evaluated with a sample of low-income Latino children from language minority families. During the last month of 4th grade, 370 children were pretested on a measure of reading comprehension and vocabulary and were randomly assigned to (a) a…

After a teaching experience with the children of Ecuador with so little support, the author has come to greatly appreciate what is available for teachers in the states. Sometimes the best encouragement for a new teacher of FLES is a success story straight from the classroom. In this article, the author shares a few of the tools she has picked up…

According to a 2010 report by ACT, "Only 31 percent of students are performing at a college-and-career reading level with respect to successfully understanding complex text" (p. 5). This statistic demonstrates what educators know: Middle and high school students face numerous challenges in reading, understanding, connecting to, and…

This highly regarded work brings together prominent authorities on vocabulary teaching and learning to provide a comprehensive yet concise guide to effective instruction. The book showcases practical ways to teach specific vocabulary words and word-learning strategies and create engaging, word-rich classrooms. Instructional activities and games…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the home literacy environment of a nationally representative sample of preschoolers with disabilities and their subsequent receptive vocabulary and reading comprehension skills using data from the Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study. Results from linear regressions indicated…

We examine the effect of direct and indirect teaching of vocabulary and word reading on pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children following use of an electronic storybook (e-book). The children in each age group were randomly assigned to an intervention group which read the e-book or to a control group which was afforded the regular school…

Five experiments examined whether overt repetition (i.e., saying a word aloud) during exposure is critical to the expressive learning of new words. When participants did not engage in overt repetition during exposure, they nevertheless exhibited clear expressive learning, both with and without an accompanying semantics, indicating that overt…

The purpose of this paper is to propose an applied model for the assessment of bilingual children's language abilities with standardised tests. We discuss the purposes of such tests, especially in relation to vocabulary knowledge, and potential applications of test results for each of those purposes. The specific case to be examined here is that…

CALL evaluation is important because it is the most efficient means to prove CALL effectiveness. While both learning process and learning outcome should be investigated in empirical evaluation, the precise relationship between the two needs to be examined closely. Only by doing so can we identify useful CALL design features that facilitate…

In the author's piece "Computing the Demands of Vocabulary Acquisition from Reading" ("Language Learning & Technology," October, 2007), he argued that building an adequate functional L2 lexicon for reading from reading alone cannot be done by the majority of learners in the normal time frame of instructed L2 learning. An…

Second language (L2) learners must often learn to perceive and produce novel L2 phoneme contrasts. Although both research and intuition suggest that these difficulties can be overcome to some extent with exposure to the L2, it is not known what consequences this kind of learning has for the phonological structure of the L2 lexicon. We present an…