Shared-book reading is a well-established intervention to foster vocabulary development. Factors influencing its effectiveness are, however, less well studied, particularly with regard to story-delivery. We contrasted a read-aloud with a free storytelling approach and tested effects on vocabulary learning. In the first study, 83 preschoolers aged…

This article is about an Action Research project carried out at a public Institution in Sincelejo, Colombia. The research purpose was to determine the effect of transactional communication strategies (TCS) on pre-service teachers' speaking skill. In a diagnostic stage, problems in the speaking skill were identified then an action stage was carried…

The effectiveness of explicit instruction, within the context of strategy development in learners, has been widely accepted for several years. However, the methods used within explicit vocabulary instruction are varied and comparatively few studies have directly compared methods. This study investigates the type of instruction (in a visual or…

For this dissertation, teacher linguistic awareness (TLingA) involves teacher linguistic knowledge, teacher language awareness (TLA), and teacher cognition for second language (L2) teachers. Teacher linguistic knowledge is an understanding of how language functions and is compiled within the different areas of linguistics. And TLA is the knowledge…

Language instructors play a decisive role in adult language learners' learning and retention of vocabulary through planning, selection, and teaching of vocabulary and strategies. However, some professional language schools lack extensive teacher-training programs that prepare instructors with the skills required to select and teach vocabulary,…

A key question in early word learning is how children cope with the uncertainty in natural naming events. One potential mechanism for uncertainty reduction is cross-situational word learning--tracking word/object co-occurrence statistics across naming events. But empirical and computational analyses of cross-situational learning have made strong…

Deriving the meaning of unknown words from context and its relationship to text comprehension was investigated in 24 individuals with Down syndrome and in 24 typically developing children matched for the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) score. The study consisted of three phases. Unknown words were identified during the first phase (PPVT).…

Neighbourhood Density (ND) and Phonotactic Probability (PP) influence word learning in children. This influence appears to change over development but the separate developmental trajectories of influence of PP and ND on word learning have not previously been mapped. This study examined the cross-sectional developmental trajectories of influence of…

Infants begin to segment words from fluent speech during the same time period that they learn phonetic categories. Segmented words can provide a potentially useful cue for phonetic learning, yet accounts of phonetic category acquisition typically ignore the contexts in which sounds appear. We present two experiments to show that, contrary to the…

Studies show that children trust previously reliable sources over previously unreliable ones (e.g., Koenig, Clement, & Harris, 2004). However, it is unclear from these studies whether children rely on accuracy or conventionality to determine the reliability and, ultimately, the trustworthiness of a particular source. In the current study, 3- and…

Dyslexia is a reading disability that can, in some cases, be cured. The most frequent treatment for dyslexia consists on repeatedly performing certain word exercises. Because most dyslexic patients are young children, most applications for word training are games. The development of such games is costly and it involves different parts (developers,…

We report three eyetracking experiments that examine the learning procedure used by adults as they pair novel words and visually presented referents over a sequence of referentially ambiguous trials. Successful learning under such conditions has been argued to be the product of a learning procedure in which participants provisionally pair each…

Cross-situational learning has recently gained attention as a plausible candidate for the mechanism that underlies the learning of word-meaning mappings. In a recent study, Blythe and colleagues have studied how many trials are theoretically required to learn a human-sized lexicon using cross-situational learning. They show that the level of…

Foreign language educators have developed measures to assess the proficiency of U.S. high school learners. Most have compared language learners to clearly defined criteria for proficiency in the language (criterion-referenced assessment) or to the performance of other monolingual English speakers (norm-referenced assessment). In this study, the…

Orthographic facilitation refers to the boost in vocabulary learning that is provided when spellings are shown during study periods, but not during testing. The current study examined orthographic facilitation in beginning readers and whether directing their attention to print enhances the effect. In an experiment, first graders (N = 45) were…