Shared reading represents an established practice to foster preschool vocabulary development, particularly when coupled with explicit instruction in word meanings. However, a question remains as to whether explicit word definitions detract from story delivery and hence language learning. Accordingly, this study compared explicit versus…

The use of technology is becoming widespread in science and technology classes due to its overwhelming benefits in learning. Yet many English language teachers lack knowledge of the existing technologies and the 'know-how' to use it in the classroom. In this paper, the researchers report the pilot study conducted to explore the effects of virtual…

Following the proposal that consonants are more involved than vowels in coding the lexicon (Nespor, Peña & Mehler, 2003), an early lexical consonant bias was found from age 1;2 in French but an equal sensitivity to consonants and vowels from 1;0 to 2;0 in English. As different tasks were used in French and English, we sought to clarify this…

Studies of phonological development that combine speech-processing experiments with observation and analysis of production remain rare, although production experience is necessarily relevant to developmental advance. Here we focus on three proposals regarding the relationship of production to word learning: (1) "Articulatory filter": The…

This article presents four practical principles that lead to enhanced word-meaning instruction in the elementary grades. The authors, a collaborative team of researchers and classroom teachers, identified and developed these principles and related instructional activities during a three-year vocabulary instruction research project. The principles…

Basic writing and reading students are scared. More than the unfamiliar places, faces, new methods and serious consequences of it all, they are afraid of words. Even if they successfully complete remediation, move on to English 101 and advance to upper courses in other disciplines, our students often face monstrous texts, which they have precious…

In literates, reading is a fundamental channel for acquiring new vocabulary both in the mother tongue and in foreign languages. By using an artificial language learning task, we examined the acquisition of novel written words and their embedded regularities (an orthographic surface feature and a syllabic feature) in three groups of university…

Phonological awareness is assessed in various ways in both research studies and early childhood classrooms. The measures used to assess phonological awareness are related closely, although they differ in the linguistic unit used (e.g., word, syllable, onset-rime, or phoneme), the position of the linguistic unit (e.g., initial, medial, final), the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the fast mapping skills in Spanish-English bilingual preschool children in two learning contexts: storybook reading and cartoon viewing. Eighteen typically developing Spanish-English bilingual preschool children completed a fast mapping task in Spanish (L1) and in English (L2). In 4 different sessions, each…

There has been considerable interest in cognitive load in recent years, but the effect of affective load and its relationship to mental functioning has not received as much attention. In order to investigate the effects of affective stimuli on cognitive function as manifest in the ability to remember foreign language vocabulary, two groups of…

Adult Basic Education programs are under pressure to develop and deliver instruction that promotes rapid and sustained literacy development. We describe a novel approach to a literacy intervention that focuses on morphemes, which are the smallest meaningful units contained in words. We argue that if you teach learners that big words are comprised…

Differences in learning patterns of vocabulary acquisition in children at risk (+SRD) and not at risk (-SRD) for Specific Reading Disability (SRD) were examined using a microdevelopmental paradigm applied to the multi-trial Foreign Language Learning Task (FLLT; Baddeley et al., 1995). The FLLT was administered to 905 children from rural…

This study is about the role of elicited verbal imitation in toddler word learning. Forty-eight toddlers were taught eight nonwords linked to referents. During training, they were asked to imitate the nonwords. Naming of the referents was tested at three intervals (one minute later [uncued], five minutes, and 1-7 days later [cued]) and recognition…

This study describes the adaptation process of a vocabulary knowledge test for British Sign Language (BSL) into American Sign Language (ASL) and presents results from the first round of pilot testing with 20 deaf native ASL signers. The web-based test assesses the strength of deaf children's vocabulary knowledge by means of different mappings of…

Studying explicit vocabulary instruction effects on improving L2 learners' writing skill and their short and long-term retention is the purpose of the present study. To achieve the mentioned goal, a fill-in-the-blank test including 36 single words and 60 lexical phrases were administrated to 30 female upper-intermediate EFL learners. The EFL…