This case study focused on the design and implementation of a third-grade vocabulary-enhanced reading intervention for below grade-level readers. The activities aimed to simultaneously engage students in tending to phonological, orthographic, syntactical, and semantic elements of new vocabulary words while also taking into account the vital role…

Infants show shifting patterns of visual engagement to faces over the first years of life. To explore the adaptive implications of this engagement, we collected eye-tracking measures on cross-sectional samples of 10-25-month-old typically developing toddlers (TD;N = 28) and those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD;N = 54). Concurrent language…

Toddlers learn more about the world from picture books with photographs instead of drawings, but commercial books often have tactile features such as flaps that may counterintuitively hinder learning. This study tested how lift-the-flap features in a commercial picture book of first words affected 2-year-olds' (N = 32) learning of a new word for…

Research has indicated that first language (L1) English speakers acquire derivational knowledge--the ability to understand and produce derived forms of a word--through increased exposure to the language (e.g., Anglin, 1993). Second language (L2) research has shown that L2 English learners tend to have limited productive derivational knowledge in…

This article provides a "snapshot" of fourth grade English Language Arts (ELA) vocabulary instruction before and after implementation of college and career readiness standards. Our exploratory study's findings demonstrate the instructional shifts for teaching deep vocabulary knowledge as required by college and career readiness…

Purpose: Our 1-year longitudinal study tracked the development of cognate awareness among second (L2) and third language (L3) learners of French in French immersion in Grades 1 and 2 to explore the impact of orthographic overlap and cognate status (true vs. false) on children's ability to recognize cognate relationships. We also assessed the…

Directed motivational currents (DMCs) are a unique and intense motivational drive capable of supporting second language learning. Learners throughout the world can experience these unique motivational feelings regardless of their teaching and learning contexts. Therefore, researchers and language teachers have been exploring cases of DMCs since…

Previous studies have indicated inconsistencies in utilizing the mobile application known as "WhatsApp" in academic vocabulary learning. This study attempts to overcome those inconsistencies by addressing three research aims, namely a) to examine any significant difference of employing vocabulary learning between using…

Many studies have demonstrated the crucial role of vocabulary in predicting reading performance in general. More recent work has indicated that one particular facet of vocabulary (its depth) is more closely related to language comprehension, especially inferential comprehension. On this basis, we developed a training application to specifically…

This qualitative case study of a high school world language (WL) classroom with flexible language boundaries (Cummins, 2012; Creese & Blackledge, 2010; Garcia & Li Wei, 2014; Turnbull & Daily-O'Cain, 2009) examines how proficient L1 readers constructed meaning from authentic L2 text as emerging bilinguals. Grounded in sociocognitive…

The purpose of this study is to determine whether a vocabulary size test is a valid and reliable measure of longitudinal growth in vocabulary size (VS), and to investigate the relationship between growth in VS and use of vocabulary learning strategies (VLS). Kasahara's (2006) revised version of Mochizuki's (1998) Vocabulary Size Test (VST) was…

The vocabulary deficit shown by English Learners (ELs) has become evident among many educators over decades of research (Becker, 1977; Biemiller, 2001; Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990; Hart & Riseley, 2003), and has shown that a student's limited vocabulary becomes a "major barrier to school success" (Graves, 2005, p. 18).…

In recent years, there has been increasing debate and research regarding which modality of vocabulary knowledge has the strongest correlation to reading, with particular focus on distinctions between testing L2 form and L2 meaning, and between recall of answers from memory and recognition of answers from fixed options. However, relatively little…

While the study of serious games has received due attention, few studies have investigated their potentials of simultaneously offering a route to both content and language acquisition. Understanding the interdisciplinary educational affordance of serious game play is significant, as it might provide game designers and teachers with insight into…

Instructional videos for teaching second language (L2) vocabulary often feature an instructor onscreen. The instructor in the video may involuntarily produce beat gestures with their hands, as occurs in real teaching settings. Beat gestures highlight key information in speech by conveying the rhythm of the language, but do not themselves convey…