The ratio of women to men is 4 to 1 in beginning university Spanish courses, and this gap widens the higher the level of instruction (Chavez 2001). Prior experiments on reading in Spanish show that the interaction of readers' gender and passage content plays a significant role with learners at the intermediate levels, but not at advanced levels of…

This study intended to investigate the effect of spaced and massed distribution instruction on vocabulary learning. To fulfil this objective, 68 Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners (14-16 years) participated in 16 sessions. The participants were randomly divided in to two experimental groups; spaced distribution group (n = 34) and massed…

The purpose of this study was to understand messages about the role of language and literacy in the Next Generation Science Standards and the C3 Framework for Social Studies standards documents. We engaged in a content analysis of (a) framework documents that provide the theoretical basis for the standards and (b) learning expectation statements…

John Read is about to retire as Professor in Applied Language Studies at the University of Auckland. He previously taught applied linguistics, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at Victoria University of Wellington, the SEAMEO Regional Language Centre, the University of Texas El Paso,…

Learners in the trades are faced with learning a large amount of technical vocabulary along with the content of their field, but they do not tend to encounter this language outside their courses of study. This technical vocabulary is a core element in their developing knowledge of their trade and their learner identity. This article focuses first…

Perspective taking is a fundamental skill that helps us to understand others' thoughts, feelings and perceptions. Past studies have shown that there were significant relations between young children's perspective taking abilities and age, gender, formal schooling and socioeconomic status. The present study was conducted to investigate the…

In response to Golinkoff, Hoff, Rowe, Tamis-LeMonda, and Hirsh-Pasek's (2018) commentary, we clarify our goals, outline points of agreement and disagreement between our respective positions, and address the inadvertently harmful consequences of the word gap claim. We maintain that our study constitutes a serious empirical challenge to the word…

Vocabulary is the basis for all content area learning, including physical education. This article presents several easily implemented vocabulary strategies that support content learning within the cognitive domain of physical education by reinforcing conceptual understanding and relationships. These strategies include: concept circles,…

Research in the field of educational linguistics has found that low levels of academic language development negatively affect children's language, reading and writing skills and, therefore, academic achievements. This is more noticeable in students from low SES backgrounds, who traditionally have a lower exposure to academic language.…

In a preferential looking paradigm, we studied how children's looking behavior and pupillary response were modulated by the degree of phonological mismatch between the correct label of a target referent and its manipulated form. We manipulated degree of mismatch by introducing one or more featural changes to the target label. Both looking behavior…

This study compares the effectiveness of context clue strategy instruction to wide reading practices in terms of their impact on the vocabulary knowledge of students who read at frustration level. The participants were 44 sixth-grade students from a middle grades school. Students were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions. The…

Researchers disagree as to the importance for infant language learning of isolated words, which occur relatively rarely in input speech. Brent and Siskind (2001) showed that the first words infants "produce" are words their mothers used most frequently in isolation. Here we investigate the long-term effects of presentation mode on…

The present study states in the field of teaching EFL students in the process of writing correct feedback in the classroom, the study was conducted to explore the influence of feedback on the students' writing skill and language abilities in grammar. 30 student participants enrolled in "Advanced Writing" classes were administered to…

Field trips to see theater performances are a long-standing educational practice, however, there is little systematic evidence demonstrating educational benefits. This article describes the results of five random assignment experiments spanning two years where school groups were assigned by lottery to attend a live theater performance, or for some…

Learning to read English requires learning the complex statistical dependencies between orthography and phonology. Previous research has focused on how these statistics are learned in neural network models provided with as much training as needed. Children, however, are expected to acquire this knowledge in a few years of school with only limited…