This report considers Biological Sciences students' perceptions of feedback, compared with those of the University as a whole, this includes what forms of feedback were considered most useful and how feedback used. Compared with data from previous studies, Biological Sciences students gave much greater recognition to oral feedback, placing it on a…

It is well established that monolingual preschoolers' oral language development (vocabulary and oral comprehension) contributes to their later reading abilities; however, less is known about this relationship in bilingual populations where children are developing knowledge of two languages. It may be that children's abilities in one language do…

The relationship between emergent spatial understanding in different cognitive domains, including navigation and language, has rarely been studied using methods that allow for the examination of individual differences. In this study the authors explored emergent place learning and its relationship to early spatial language, namely prepositions, in…

We investigated whether and when information conveyed by spoken language impacts on the processing of visually presented objects. In contrast to traditional views, grounded-cognition posits direct links between language comprehension and perceptual processing. We used a magnetoencephalographic cross-modal priming paradigm to disentangle these…

Cantonese shape classifiers encode perceptual information that is characteristic of their associated nouns, although certain nouns are exceptional. For example, the classifier "tiu" occurs primarily with nouns for long-narrow-flexible objects (e.g., scarves, snakes, and ropes) and also occurs with the noun for a (short, rigid) key. In 3…

An online picture description methodology was used to investigate the interaction between lexical and syntactic information in spoken sentence production. In response to arrays of moving pictures, participants generated prepositional sentences, such as "The apple moves towards the dog," as well as coordinate noun phrase sentences, such…

This study investigates Swedish learners' lexical richness in French and Italian L2. A frequency-based measure was used to compare the lexical richness of learners at different proficiency levels to that of native speakers. Frequency bands based on oral L1 data were created for both languages to serve as a benchmark. For French, the results show…

Learners' ability to recognize linguistic contrasts in American Sign Language (ASL) was investigated using a paired-comparison discrimination task. Minimal pairs containing contrasts in five linguistic categories (i.e., the formational parameters of movement, handshape, orientation, and location in ASL phonology, and a category comprised of…

Discrete trial training was delivered using English and Spanish languages to a student with autism from a Spanish-speaking family. An alternating treatments design was used to examine the effects of language of instruction on the child's response accuracy and challenging behavior. More correct responses and fewer challenging behaviors occurred…

The aim of this paper is to bring critical attention to the ways in which notions of "success" and "failure" are applied to teaching and learning in schools in England and Wales. The main philosophical text that guides the discussion is Derrida's "Signature event context", which contains a reading of J.L. Austin's…

Background: Deficits in reading airment (SLI), Down syndrome (DS) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Methods: In this review (based on a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge database to 2011), the Simple View of Reading is used as a framework for considering reading comprehension in these groups. Conclusions: There is substantial evidence for…

This study investigated factors that could affect inter-examiner reliability in the pronunciation assessment component of speaking tests. We hypothesized that the rating of pronunciation is susceptible to variation in assessment due to the amount of exposure examiners have to nonnative English accents. An inter-rater variability analysis was…

This study explores the role voice microblogging-based activities play in developing learners' spoken production skills. The study involved 33 low-intermediate level university students majoring in English at a private university in Japan. The voice microblogging application used in the study was Bubbly, a cross-platform social networking…

Researchers, educators, professional organizations, administrators, parents, and policy makers have increased their involvement in the assessment and evaluation of early childhood education programs. This interest has developed swiftly during the last decades. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the National…

In real time interaction, the ordering of words is one of the resources participants-to-talk rely on in the negotiation of shared meaning. This dissertation investigates the emergence of syntactic right-expansions in spoken German as a systematic resource in the organization of talk-in-interaction. Employing the methodology of conversation…