Purpose: This study examined whether experienced speech-language pathologists (SLPs) differ from inexperienced people in their perception of phonetic detail in children's speech. Method: Twenty-one experienced SLPs and 21 inexperienced listeners participated in a series of tasks in which they used a visual-analog scale (VAS) to rate children's…

High school students participating in online courses offered by the North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS) completed end-of-course surveys in spring 2009. When the responses of 559 foreign language students were compared to students in five other subject area groups, the findings suggested foreign language students had significantly lower…

We describe an exploratory study carried out within the University of Milan, Department of English the aim of which was to analyse features of the spoken English of first-year Modern Languages undergraduates. We compiled a learner corpus, the "Role Play" corpus, which consisted of 69 role-play interactions in English carried out by…

With the new edition of this activity book--the companion to Judith Birsh's bestselling text, "Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills"--students and practitioners will get the practice they need to use multisensory teaching effectively with students who have dyslexia and other learning disabilities. Ideal for both pre-service teacher…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine which instructional strategies elementary school principals and fourth-grade teachers perceive substantially support the development of Standard English language skills and reading proficiency in African American students. Methodology: The study used a descriptive case study. The findings were…

The past 20 years have witnessed enormous growth in a diverse array of studies which explore the linguistic impact of study abroad (SA) experiences. During this period a multitude of research projects have investigated SLA/L2 learning in SA, in a number of different languages (Russian, Japanese, French, Spanish, English), utilizing diverse…

This study investigated the use of discourse markers (DMs) by college learners of English in China. It compared the use of DMs for four discourse functions by students at different proficiency levels. An audio-video instrument called Video Oral Communication Instrument was conducted to elicit ratable speech samples. Fraser's (1999) taxonomy was…

This article explores aspects of early language and literacy that may predict later literacy development. It explores a range of assessment procedures used for oral language, vocabulary, sentence structure and phonology and early reading and writing. The article then describes a small-scale study which highlights the disconnections between the…

This study aimed to isolate the effects of the two input activities in Processing Instruction: referential activities, which force learners to focus on a form and its meaning, and affective activities, which contain exemplars of the target form and require learners to process sentence meaning. One hundred and twenty 12-year-old Taiwanese learners…

Our project was implemented with tenth grade students of a public school located in the Usme Zone in Bogotá. We decided to develop this action research project because we were concerned about our students' difficulties when attempting to speak English. They felt inhibited with activities that involved oral interaction mainly because they were…

The communicative approach in EFL education has generated a concern for the development of communication in the foreign language classroom within which the promotion of oral interaction is usually paramount. However, what constitutes authentic oral interaction is sometimes not clearly understood and some of the activities that take place in the…

The theme behind this paper is to review the language policy and language planning in the Sudan, after the institutionalization of peace; by exploring the recent policy of political factions in the North and the South towards languages in post-war Sudan. This effort aims at encouraging non-Arabic speaking-ethnic-groups to accept the Arabic…

The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of using thematic units in small group instructional settings for struggling readers to increase oral language in the areas of receptive, expressive, and written vocabulary. This research examined the efficacy of using thematic units in small group instructional settings for struggling readers…

The current study lays the groundwork for a model of Mandarin tones based on both native speakers' and non-native speakers' perception and production. It demonstrates that there is variability in non-native speakers' tone productions and that there are differences in the perceptual boundaries in native speakers and non-native speakers. There…

Linguistic diversity provides even greater challenges for our educational system. English Language Learners (ELLs) are a diverse population of students who are learning English in school. They come from numerous cultural and economic backgrounds, and live throughout the country. The task of the classroom teacher is to find a way to reach these…