This study describes the vocal development of infants born with very low birth weights (VLBW). Samples of vocalizations were recorded from three groups of infants when they were 8, 12 and 18 months of age: preterm VLBW infants with bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), preterm VLBW infants without BPD, and healthy full-term infants. Infants with BPD…

Background: Although a number of studies have been conducted on normal acquisition in French, systematic methods for analysis of French and normative group data have been lacking. Aims: To develop a systematic method for the analysis of language samples in Quebec French, and to provide preliminary normative data on early lexical and syntactic…

This article addresses word study for upper elementary and middle school classrooms. Word study is often neglected in classrooms due to misconceptions and fears of classroom teachers, especially teachers of older students. Conclusions from a research project conducted with teachers reveal both positive and negative understandings of implementing…

The author asserts that "Children benefit when teachers and parents reinforce the same concepts and ideas. For this to happen, teachers and parents must have some knowledge of what happens in the classroom and what happens at home that support reading acquisition." In this article, the author describes several strategies that teachers can share…

Children sometimes seem to expect words to have mutually exclusive meanings in certain contexts of early word learning. In 2 studies, 12- to 24-month-old children and their parents were videotaped as they engaged in conversations while playing with sets of toys (sea creatures, vehicles, doll clothing) in free-play, storytelling, and categorization…

Assuming readers' emotional responses can inform literary analysis, this study of poetry readers featured an instructional intervention that involved modeling both cognitive and affective reading processes through a think-and-feel-aloud pedagogy. Eleventh-grade students in 2 conditions participated in a 4-week unit on reading poetry. Control group…

Individual differences in nonword repetition (NWR) show a particularly strong association with vocabulary acquisition for both first- (L1) and second-language (L2) learners, and they serve as a behavioral marker for specific language impairment (SLI) in children (Gathercole, 2006). However, this association is susceptible to alternative…

English language learners (ELLs)--one of the lowest-achieving and fastest growing middle-school subpopulations--are challenged in the classroom by language components which could potentially jumpstart real mathematical growth for these and, eventually, all other students as well. Going beyond traditional word problems, this study documented and…

Many teachers find themselves working with ELLs in content-area classes without the arsenal of tools and training that will help them help their students. This is a recounting of how one teacher, with the help of thoughtful observers and a commitment to teaching all of her students, worked to create strategies that improved language learners'…

Language and vocabulary represent the very foundation of learning to read and write. Children who do not develop strong oral language skills and vocabulary in these early years will find it difficult to keep pace with their peers. Children use the natural medium of language for thinking. Those who acquire a substantial vocabulary are often able to…

This study was a longitudinal examination (21 month follow-up) of language development in a pair of fraternal twins. One twin received a cochlear implant at age 20 months secondary to sensorineural hearing loss. The other twin had normal hearing. Data were obtained every 6 months following her initial cochlear implant stimulation. Both twins…

The goal of this study was to test the effectiveness of a Language Wizard/Player with Baldi, a computer-animated tutor, for teaching new vocabulary items to children with a hearing loss. Eight students with hearing loss, between the ages of 6 and 10, were tested and trained for about 20-30 minutes a day, 2 days a week for about 10 weeks on three…

During the first year of life, infants' perception of speech becomes tuned to the phonology of the native language, as revealed in laboratory discrimination and categorization tasks using syllable stimuli. However, the implications of these results for the development of the early vocabulary remain controversial, with some results suggesting that…

This study examined the effects of acoustic variability on second language vocabulary learning. English native speakers learned new words in Spanish. Exposure frequency to the words was constant. Dependent measures were accuracy and latency of picture-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English recall. Experiment 1 compared presentation formats of neutral…

Framed under a cognitive approach to task-based L2 learning, this study used a pedagogical approach to investigate the effects of three vocabulary lessons (one traditional and two task-based) on acquisition of basic meanings, forms and morphological aspects of Spanish words. Quantitative analysis performed on the data suggests that the type of…