Describes how one high school English teacher uses puns on a regular basis to augment his vocabulary reviews. Argues that doing so aids in developing students' vocabulary, since it compels students to pay closer attention and gives many students a chance to display their creative-thinking skills. (SR)

Conducts experiments to investigate the effects of extra contexts (pictures or example sentences) on learning context-dependent words. Finds no differences from results obtained with context-free words and shows that extra contexts inhibit learning context-dependent words in simultaneous presentations. Notes that application of feedback techniques…

Two experiments used the preferential looking task to assess early word comprehension in 12- to 24-month olds. Results indicated that when target stimuli were named, 12-month olds displayed an increase in target looking for typical--but not atypical--targets, whereas 18- and 24-month olds displayed increases for both. (Author/KB)

Presents a basic vocabulary strategy to boost elementary students' reading comprehension and success. The three steps include identifying vocabulary words that students will need to comprehend the reading; preteaching only three to five words; and connecting the new words to concepts that students already know. (SM)

Analyzed vocalizations/verbalizations from children acquiring English or French in later single-word period to identify trochaic bias. Found that neither language's vocalizations were exclusively trochaic. French/English differences in iambic productions and acoustic realization of accent were traceable to adult input. Distribution of trochaic and…

Reviews recent research on consulting a dictionary in second language reading and vocabulary learning. From the perspective of cognitive learning theory, reevaluates the limited role that has often been accorded to dictionary consulting. (Author/VWL)

Voice onset time (VOT) was measured in the production of /t/ in the initial position of 60 English words spoken by native English (NE) speakers and native Spanish (NS) speakers who began learning English before the age of 21 years. Subjects rated words for familiarity, age of acquisition, imageability, and relatedness to words in the Spanish…

Used visual preference technique to examine infants' (mean age 14.8 months) comprehension of two novel words for images of novel objects. Found that infants looked preferentially at images that matched an auditory stimulus and that infants showed learning after about 12 presentations of new words. Results support previous demonstration of rapid…

Used a modification of Akhtar, Carpenter, and Tomasello's (1996) task involving interpretation of novel nouns to test whether 18- to 28-month-olds' smart word learning derived from general attention and memory processes rather than knowledge about the communicative intents of others. Findings similar to those of Akhtar and colleagues suggest that…

Verbal/vocal interactions of three Japanese mother-child dyads were examined in toddlers to determine whether mothers provide information that may facilitate the elaboration of child lexical forms during the transition from the prelinguistic to the linguistic period. Mothers were found to reproduce only the child's word like utterances, both well-…

Vocabulary development of a sample of 42 Italian children was evaluated through monthly administration of the Italian version of the CDI. Data collection started at age one for 32 children and a few moths later for the remaining subjects and continued until children's vocabulary reached 200 words. At fixed stages of vocabulary size, individual…

Discusses research, and strategies and activities for vocabulary development, grouped into five areas: knowing words, morphology, the use of context, the role of definitions in understanding words, and the size and growth of vocabulary. Outlines questions for metalinguistic awareness that can help engage students in word learning. Offers 10…

Fifty-five children from multilingual backgrounds being educated in English were studied longitudinally over a 2-year period with measures taken of their phonological skill, vocabulary, and letter knowledge. Phonological segmentation ability and letter knowledge proved significant predictors of both concurrent and later reading achievement a year…

The vocabulary and block design short forms of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition were administered to 63 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 69 children with reading difficulties (RD), and 68 children with comorbid ADHD and RD. No significant differences were found. (Contains references.)…

Study identifies home literacy and literacy interest as two independent sources of literacy experience among 92 kindergarten prereaders. Together, they accounted for significant variance in oral vocabulary and on a letter-name and letter-sound measure of early written language. Discussion focuses on print exposure versus explicit print-sound…