This study investigates the effectiveness of using dictogloss in making students notice and reproduce key vocabulary and highlighted structural features in a college intermediate level Arabic L2 class. Dictogloss is a technique used in second language classes to make students pay attention to the relationship between form and meaning. Students…

There have been great strides made in research on vocabulary in the last 30 years. However, there has been relatively little progress in the development of new vocabulary tests. This may be due in some degree to the impressive contributions made by tests such as the Vocabulary Levels Test (Nation, 1983; Schmitt et al., 2001) and the Word…

This action research investigated the effectiveness of vocabulary notebooks in enhancing Grade 12 Omani female students' vocabulary acquisition. The study was conducted with twenty-five students in a public school, with a focus group of five average-level learners. Drawing on the framework of Schmitt and Schmitt (1995), the vocabulary notebooks…

Instructional design is an integral part of a balanced approach to teaching vocabulary instruction. This article presents several instructional procedures using research-based vocabulary strategies and explains how to design and adapt those strategies in order to reach desired learning outcomes. Emphasis is placed on research-based principles that…

This article explores the significance of a word and the changes it undergoes in its form when it is placed in the hierarchy of grammatical constituents thereby forming a new word termed as vocabulary. This change or transformation is the result of affixations. Transformation becomes essential as the words learnt cannot be used as such in a…

In this paper the authors briefly describe how features of the multilevel bi-factor model align with salient features of instruction. They then apply this framework to measure the extent to which teachers' instruction is supportive of vocabulary learning in second and third grade reading comprehension and vocabulary lessons. The results lend…

Previous research has provided evidence that mental imagery and embodied action can facilitate lexical learning in a novel language. However, it is unclear "how" these factors interact--as well as "why" they play a role--in lexical learning. Through a set of four experiments, this research demonstrated that neither mental…

How is number-concept acquisition related to overall language development? Experiments 1 and 2 measured number-word knowledge and general vocabulary in a total of 59 children, ages 30-60 months. A strong correlation was found between number-word knowledge and vocabulary, independent of the child's age, contrary to previous results (D. Ansari et…

Around their first birthday infants begin to talk, yet they comprehend words long before. This study investigated the event-related potentials (ERP) responses of nine-month-olds on basic level picture-word pairings. After a familiarization phase of six picture-word pairings per semantic category, comprehension for novel exemplars was tested in a…

In his foundational work, "English Composition and Rhetoric," Alexander Bain set forth the framework for what students and teachers now routinely refer to as the five-paragraph essay. Teachers were so inculcated with Bain's paradigm for the "perfect" essay format, they in turn have inculcated their students, and they just say now, "Write an…

The present study aimed to clarify the spatiotemporal characteristics of memory processing for abstract and concrete words. Neuromagnetic responses to memory encoding and recognition tasks of abstract and concrete nouns were obtained in 18 healthy adults using a whole-head neuromagnetometer. During memory encoding, abstract words elicited larger…

The effect of phonology and semantics on word learning in 5- and 6-year-old children was explored. In Experiment 1, children learned to read words varying in spelling-sound consistency and imageability. Consistency affected performance on early trials, whereas imageability affected performance on later trials. Individual differences among children…

Preschool educators represent a unique population for which to design professional development; as a result, innovative professional development models are necessary. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of training preschool teachers to use a Shared Reading Innovation Configuration (IC) tool on their planning, implementation, and…

Young children learn new vocabulary with great agility and speed, but their learning is dependent on the range of words they are exposed to. Teachers can naturally facilitate children's vocabulary learning using a variety of strategies, including making conversation and posing thoughtful questions. But there is also an important role for direct…

British learners acquire very little vocabulary in their foreign languages, compared to pupils elsewhere in Europe, particularly learners of English as a foreign language. Could the materials used for teaching help explain this difference? An analysis of the vocabulary loading of a textbook for French as a foreign language commonly used in…