The article describes the development of story comprehension in young children with and without language impairment. It further describes the procedures, both traditional and novel.

Does the choice of test for assessing reading comprehension influence the outcome of genetic analyses? A twin design compared two types of reading comprehension tests classified as primarily associated with word decoding (RC-D) or listening comprehension (RC-LC). For both types of tests, the overall genetic influence is high and nearly identical.…

This paper argues that we know too little of the mental processes in which a listener engages during an academic lecture; and that a better understanding of these processes would assist EAP instructors on pre-sessional courses to target their teaching more precisely. The account provides insights into listener behaviour from three possible…

This study investigates the contribution of second-language (L2) morphological awareness to foreign language reading comprehension. Tenth graders (n = 188) at a South Korean high school were assessed on 6 reading- and language-related variables: phonological decoding, listening comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, passage-level reading…

The purpose of this study is to provide a deeper understanding of learning disabled young adults who struggle with low literacy skills in order to learn more about their literacy profiles and, from an emic perspective, understand the affective factors that may have influenced their attendance and persistence in a post-secondary residential…

Most of the students majoring in the English Language Teaching Departments, as in other foreign language departments, have difficulties in pronouncing the words correctly in Turkey. The National University Entrance Exam delivered annually does not test oral and aural competencies of the prospective English language teachers. As they are not…

This article reports on a small-scale qualitative study aimed at exploring the listening process in a group of Spanish beginners in a UK higher education context. The specific aim of the study was to inform the development of materials for listening strategy awareness-raising activities. The exploration was focused on identifying (a) strategies…

We examined temporarily ambiguous coordination structures such as "put the butter in the bowl and the pan on the towel." Minimal Attachment predicts that the ambiguous noun phrase "the pan" will be interpreted as a noun-phrase coordination structure because it is syntactically simpler than clausal coordination. Constraint-based…

Video technology is commonly used in L2 classrooms, but it is rarely used in assessing L2 listening, and there is little research investigating how L2 listeners process video texts (spoken texts that include the visual channel). The purpose of this study is to examine how L2 test-takers interact with a video listening test: the rate L2 listening…

Intentional forgetting refers to impaired memory arising from an instruction to forget unwanted material. Intentional forgetting yielded with a list-method task is often interpreted as evidence for retrieval inhibition. This paper presents a study on the relationships among intentional forgetting, anxiety, and EFL listening comprehension among…

The current study analyzed the relationship between text comprehension and memory skills in preschoolers. We were interested in verifying the hypothesis that memory is a specific contributor to listening comprehension in preschool children after controlling for verbal abilities. We were also interested in analyzing the developmental path of the…

Given that summer abroad programs are becoming more and more popular, the aim of the present study is to find out whether foreign language proficiency can be significantly improved during a summer stay of 3-4 weeks. The present study examines learners' linguistic gains through oral fluency and accuracy measures as well as a listening comprehension…

Discourse markers can clearly indicate the organization of discourse, remind the hearer of the preceding and the following contents, and express clearly the concrete speech acts. The aims of this study are to explore the relationship between the discourse-marker-based model and listening comprehension as well as the different effects of such a…

The incorporation of dialogic reading techniques in adult-child book reading has been effective in improving early literacy skills in children with language delays and those from at-risk populations. There is, however, limited research that examines the potential utility of dialogic reading strategies for children with disabilities such as Autism…

Comprehensibility, a major concept in second language (L2) pronunciation research that denotes listeners' perceptions of how easily they understand L2 speech, is central to interlocutors' communicative success in real-world contexts. Although comprehensibility has been modeled in several L2 oral proficiency scales--for example, the Test of English…