Background: Children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) are known to have difficulties in narrative language and especially with use of evaluative enrichment devices. However, little is known about their production of event narratives. Aims: To establish if children with ASD differ from typically developing peers in their production of general…

This article reports empirical findings from an ongoing investigation into the acquisition of second-language (L2) phonemic contrasts. Specifically, we consider the status and role of the phenomenon of hypercorrection in the various stages through which L2 learners develop and internalize a target language (TL) contrast. We adopt the prevailing…

The cumulative body of eye movement research provides significant insight into how readers process text. The heart of this work spans roughly 40 years reflecting the maturity of both the topics under study and experimental approaches used to investigate reading. Recent technological advancements offer increased flexibility to the field, providing…

Twitter offers an engaging way to introduce students to reader-oriented interpretation of the Bible. The exercise described here introduces students to the idea that the reader has a role in the production of a text's meaning, which thus varies from reader to reader. Twitter enables us to capture the real-time thoughts of a variety of…

Integrated speaking test tasks (integrated tasks) offer textual and/or aural input for test takers on which to base their subsequent oral responses. This path-analytic study modeled the relationship between test anxiety and the performance of such tasks and explored whether test anxiety would differentially affect the performance of independent…

The amount of oral language exposure a young child receives affects the child's reading-readiness skills. Factors that affect the increase of language and thus affect the reading success of children include oral language ability, learning opportunities, and behaviors that young children experience. Oral language development includes gaining…

Defining what makes a person bilingual is notoriously difficult and dependent on various factors like fluency, age of acquisition, and situational context, among others. The notion of a "balanced bilingual" is even more elusive and fraught with limitations regarding the proper assessment and linguistic profiling of bilinguals, leading to…

This article explores the preschool teachers' use of concrete and abstract comments and questions within the classroom contexts of storybook reading and guided play to promote classroom conversations. Early childhood educators promote oral language development by creating a language-rich environment in which children become active participants in…

This article reports a post hoc analysis conducted as part of a larger study in which 61 typically developing, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were assessed in phonological awareness (PA), vocabulary (i.e., receptive, expressive, and definitional), and grammatical skill at baseline and 3, 6, and 9 months later. The larger study's purpose was to shed light…

Background: There is wide variation in language abilities among young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), with some toddlers developing age-appropriate language while others remain minimally verbal after age 5. Conflicting findings exist regarding predictors of language outcomes in ASD and various methodological issues limit the…

A quasi-experimental study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of providing written corrective feedback (WCF) to Arab speakers of English on ten uses of English prepositions. Arab speakers commonly find it difficult to correctly use English prepositions, mainly due to the differences between the two languages (e.g. Ortega, 2009). Examples…

Constructing and critiquing scientific arguments has become an increasingly important goal for science education. Yet, the differences in the ways students construct collaborative oral and individual written socioscientific arguments are not well established. Our research with one middle school class in an urban New England school district…

This article describes how kindergarten students represent their understanding of mathematical knowledge. The study examines the students' use of oral expressions, drawings, written language, and gestures when communicating mathematically with their classmates and teacher.

Blocks are not just for play! In this article, Nicole Andrews describes observing the interactions of three young boys enthusiastically engaged in the kindergarten block center of their classroom, using blocks in a building project that displayed their ability to use critical thinking skills, physics exploration, and the development of language…

A research study conducted in an urban district middle school setting applies cognitive science principles to science vocabulary. Within the context of a personal story told by the lead investigator, the results of the study are shared and suggest that more active, engaging strategies with complex core curriculum may improve retention and…