This study is an attempt to classify raters according to their weighting patterns and explore systematic differences between rater types in the rating process. In the context of an EFL speaking test, 126 raters were classified into three types--form-oriented, balanced, and content-oriented--through cluster analyses of their weighting patterns…

The aim of this study is to investigate the oral corrective feedback (OCF) preferences of learners of Turkish as a foreign language (TFL) in order to understand whether they would like their errors to be corrected and, if so, when, which of them, how and by whom they would like to be corrected in the classroom environment. A questionnaire with…

It has been demonstrated that statistical learning, or the ability to use statistical information to learn the structure of one's environment, plays a role in young children's acquisition of linguistic knowledge. Although most research on statistical learning has focused on language acquisition processes, such as the segmentation of words from…

The Simple View of Reading (SVR; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990) has a longstanding history as a model of reading comprehension, but it has mostly been applied to native English speakers. The SVR posits reading comprehension is a function of the interaction between word-level reading skills and oral language skills. It has been…

In the age of technology, educators are encouraged to incorporate online resources into their teaching, but the effectiveness of these resources on learning and the student perspective is rarely taken into consideration. A key aspect to the assessment of online resources for international students is the user's perspective. Culture has a…

The focus of this research was to examine the impact of the use of interactive whiteboards (IWB) on the engagement of students with intellectual disability in early reading lessons. Case studies of five students with intellectual disability were carried out using an alternating treatments design. Detailed coding of video recordings of lessons was…

The purpose of this study was to examine the efficiency of an incremental rehearsal oral versus an incremental rehearsal written procedure on a sample of primary grade children's weekly spelling performance. Participants included five second and one first grader who were in need of help with their spelling according to their teachers. An…

It is well supported by behavioral and neuroimaging studies that typical language function is lateralized to the left hemisphere in the adult brain and this laterality is less well defined in children. The behavioral literature suggests there maybe be sex differences in language development, but this has not been examined systematically with…

The aim of the present study is to examine the influence of diglossia on linguistic and narrative structures in Arab kindergarten children by testing performance in production and comprehension. The 30 children who participated in our study were asked to retell one narrative text that was read aloud to them in Literary Arabic and another narrative…

Recent studies in corpus linguistics have revealed apparent inconsistencies between the prescriptive grammar presented in EFL textbooks and the type of grammar used in the speech of native speakers. Such variations and learning gaps deprive EFL learners of the actual use of English and delay their oral/aural developmental processes. The focus of…

Research has shown that many deaf students do not develop age-appropriate reading and writing abilities. This study evaluates the literacy skills of deaf students, hard of hearing students, and students with cochlear implants in bilingual/bicultural schools in Denmark. The results show that 45 per cent of the students did not have any reading and…

The effects of study abroad on students' language proficiency have been analyzed using a number of measures such as surveys, questionnaires and oral proficiency exams (Collentine, 2004; Freed, 1995; Segalowitz, & Freed, 2004). Furthermore, researchers have sought to determine the proficiency gains of study abroad (SA) students by comparing…

This article describes the development of new scales for assessing the status of a young child's language comprehension and production. Items and sections on the scales were included to reflect advances in research on language acquisition and impairment. The New Reynell Developmental Language Scales (NRDLS) were trialled on 301 children and then…

The earliest hypothesis concerning the phonetic-phonological roots of reading and writing learning disabilities is usually attributed to Boder in the U.S. literature. Yet by following a trail of references to work in psychology and education conducted some 30 years earlier in the USSR, we find the seeds of this idea already well established in the…

The scoring of constructed responses may introduce construct-irrelevant factors to a test score and affect its validity and fairness. Fatigue is one of the factors that could negatively affect human performance in general, yet little is known about its effects on a human rater's scoring quality on constructed responses. In this study, we compared…