Early spontaneous gesture, specifically deictic gesture, predicts subsequent vocabulary development in typically developing (TD) children. Here, we ask whether deictic gesture plays a similar role in predicting later vocabulary size in children with Down Syndrome (DS), who have been shown to have difficulties in speech production, but strengths in…

Mitigating the borders that exist between scientific cultures can be a difficult task. The purpose of this paper is to look at the differences and similarities that occur in language use when two scientific cultures communicate in the same forum on a topic of mutual concern. The results provide an opportunity to share knowledge of an Indigenous…

This article explores the connection between critical reading and Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action. It proposes that Habermas's criteria used for evaluating validity claims in communicative action can be applied in reading texts critically. Analyses of different types of texts are presented to show how critical reading is done in a…

The oral re-telling of traditional tales, modelled by a storyteller and taught to children in school, can be understood as "non-instrumental" practice in speaking and listening that emphasises oral language over the reading and writing of stories. While oral storytelling has significant benefits to children's education and development,…

In the United States, early childhood educators are expected to follow the trend to enforce academic curriculum for preschoolers. This effort diminishes the value of play in the young developmental years of children. The purpose of this study was to explore the type of activities and strategies that promote development of language and literacy…

This mixed-methods study explored the students' learning from the task-based collaborative writing process (Ellis, 2003; Willis, 1996) and the effects of its process on their writing improvement in a compulsory academic writing course. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this course was conducted completely online. This 15-week course followed the…

This article provides an introduction, based on the most recent research available, to the history of language learning and teaching (HoLLT) in Britain. After an overview of the state of research, I consider which languages have been learnt, why and how that has changed; the role of teachers and tests in determining what was taught; changes in how…

Research to guide text structure interventions for the primary grades is very limited, yet as early as in kindergarten, many state standards increasingly emphasize exposure to challenging expository texts. The purpose of the present study was to provide preliminary evidence of the feasibility and promise (or the effects) of three brief text…

Research links to positive student outcomes have highlighted the need to address disposition during teacher clinical practice using sound measures. Education preparation providers may use these indicators to create defensible measures of disposition by formatting the indicators into Likert scales or rubrics. Authors have extended the psychometric…

How can social change become possible when secondary teachers approach argument as participation in ongoing conversations? The authors illustrate how--through writing, speaking, and reading to develop a letter to their principal arguing for a school policy change--secondary students participated in multiple conversational spheres across time and…

To what extent can second language (L2) speakers acquire a syntactic representation for an L2 structure absent in the first language (L1)? Findings from L2 structural priming studies are in conflict inasmuch as evidence for and against continuity between L1 and L2 sentence production has been shown. Furthermore, previous investigations have not…

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to examine the comprehension problems of children who have a specific reading comprehension deficit (SCD), which is characterized by poor reading comprehension despite adequate decoding. The meta-analysis included 86 studies of children with SCD who were assessed in reading comprehension and oral language…

The communication journey of a child with hearing loss is often a complex, interwoven process in which the child's use of language or method of communication may change numerous times. As there has been limited research exploring the caregiver decision-making process behind making such changes, this qualitative descriptive study aimed to explore…

This exploratory study aimed to examine whether early exposure to Chinese as a heritage language (CHL) provides facilitation in word-knowledge development in collegiate CHL learners by comparing word-level subskills, including oral vocabulary knowledge, print vocabulary knowledge, morphological awareness, and lexical inferencing ability, between…

Using Swain's (1985) output hypothesis as a basis, this article investigated the effect an immediate repeated oral task had on the performance of participants. Two groups of beginner learners of English as an additional language in Brazil performed a decision-making oral task in groups. Drawing from Lynch and MacLean's (2001) carousel task, the…