Pam Shanks describes the stages in the child's development of language and reminds us that the Montessori principle of observation should guide the support of the child with articulation errors. For most children with developmental articulation delays, the directress can implement Montessori materials and use conversational strategies to emphasize…

Online course design has experienced an upheaval recently with the arrival of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), turning the model which underpins many online courses on its head. In contrast to MOOCs, conventional online courses have usually been designed for small private groups of participants, giving access to closed content and online…

This dissertation examines the acquisition of object clitic placement in Standard Italian by heritage speakers (HSs) of non-standard Italian dialects. It compares two different groups of Standard Italian learners--Northern Italian dialect HSs and Southern Italian dialect HSs--whose heritage dialects contrast with each other in clitic word order.…

During the summer of 2014, Austin ISD's Department of English Language Learners provided guided language acquisition design (Project GLAD) training to 33 district teachers. Teachers from two AISD campuses were selected to participate in the district's pilot of the Project GLAD program. This report summarizes Fall 2014 survey responses from the 33…

This mixed-methods study investigates the ideologies, attitudes, and understandings of language, bilingualism, and second language acquisition among students, teachers, and parents in a Bay Area dual immersion (DI) program. The work shows that despite rhetoric and awareness of language variation, students' and teachers' approaches to language…

Purpose: In this study, the authors aimed to examine the vocalizations of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the second year of life and their relationship to other areas of development. Method: Vocalizations were examined in 125 children between ages 18 and 24 months: 50 later diagnosed with ASD, 25 with developmental delays (DD) in…

Today there is a great deal of interest in and a lot of hype about using video games in schools. Video games are a new silver bullet. Games can create good learning because they teach in powerful ways. The theory behind game-based learning is not really new, but a traditional and well-tested approach to deep and effective learning, often…

The aim of this study was to determine, using speech error and articulatory analyses, whether the binary distinction between iambs and trochees should be extended to include additional prosodic subcategories. Adults, children who are normally developing, and children with specific language impairment (SLI) participated. Children with SLI were…

The primary focus of this piece is the fundamental need to read to children to set the scene for their literacy development. It is asserted, reading to all children should happen daily for the first three years of their schooling. The reasons for this assertion are explored and explained: a vast vocabulary is gleaned, learned and used; the simple…

Heritage language acquisition has been characterized by various asymmetries, including the differential acquisition rates of various linguistic areas and the unbalanced acquisition of different categories within a single area. This paper examines Arabic heritage speakers' knowledge of subject-verb agreement versus noun-adjective agreement with the…

This study examined the nature of bilinguals' conceptual representations and the links from these representations to words in L1 and L2. Specifically, we tested an assumption of the Bilingual Dual Coding Theory that conceptual representations include image representations, and that learning two languages in separate contexts can result in…

This study investigated fast mapping in late-talking (LT) toddlers and toddlers with normal language (NL) development matched on age, nonverbal cognition, and maternal education. The fast-mapping task included novel object labels and familiar words. The LT group scored significantly lower than the NL group on novel word comprehension and…

A small number of studies show that music training is associated with improvements in reading or in its component skills. A central question underlying this present research is whether musical activity can enhance the acquisition of reading skill, potentially before formal reading instruction begins. We explored two dimensions of this question: an…

To acquire one's native phonological system, language-specific phonological categories and relationships must be extracted from the input. The acquisition of the categories and relationships has each in its own right been the focus of intense research. However, it is remarkable that research on the acquisition of categories and the relations…

This study examined whether poor pointing gestures and imitative actions at 18 months of age uniquely predicted late language production at 36 months, beyond the role of poor language at 18 months of age. Data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study were utilized. Maternal reports of the children's nonverbal skills and language were…