Studies on monolingual children have shown that home language and literacy support is crucial in children's early literacy acquisition. However, such support has not been examined as thoroughly among bilingual children, including heritage speakers. This study investigated the effect of home language and literacy support on important precursors of…

We investigated how long-term retention of new words was affected by task type, number of word occurrences in the teaching materials and the combination of the two factors. The tasks were: reading a text with occasional Focus on Form when learners used dictionaries (T+F), or reading a text with Focus on Forms, i.e. word focused exercises (T+Fs).…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the Iranian EFL learners' beliefs on the role of RL in vocabulary learning, and how it could affect their achievement. One-hundred and three students majoring in English (Literature, Translation, and Teaching) at the Departments of Foreign Languages and Linguistics at Roudehen and the Western Branch of…

The purpose of this research is to identify teaching strategies and practices that impact the vocabulary and language development for English Language Learners. Today, there are over 3.5 million non-English speaking students enrolled in public classrooms and the number has continued to climb over the past decade. Many ELL students live in poverty…

The ESEA Blueprint for Reform states that teachers need "effective, ongoing, job-embedded, professional development that is targeted to student and school needs… [and] aligned with evidence of improvements in student learning." Unfortunately, the professional development approaches advocated, though sensible and compelling in theory,…

This dissertation investigates the importance of vocabulary development in kindergarten. The purpose of this qualitative case study design was to explore and describe how kindergarten teachers in 1 Midwestern U.S. suburban school district perceive and value the task of teaching vocabulary. The results were based on data collected from 2 focus…

This study examined the effects of performance feedback information on parenting practices that contribute to development of vocabulary and pre-literacy skills. Fifty-one dyads of parents and their pre-school aged children were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups. Group one received full treatment including a workshop and feedback.…

This study examined parents' and toddlers' talk and viewing behaviour while co-viewing an educational infant DVD focused on teaching language. Sixty-four 12- to 25-month-old infants viewed a DVD in a laboratory with their parents. A cluster analysis on parent talk revealed three groups: High, Moderate, and Low Teaching Focus parents. The High…

This study of incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading, involving 72 freshmen at two Asian universities, investigated (i) the effect of repeated encounters with target words on the development of seven aspects of word knowledge, and (ii) the effect of L1 lexicalization on the acquisition of meaning--does the absence of an L1 translation…

Many educators know that studying and composing literature and poetry helps English learners develop their own voice and sense of audience, and to express important social ideas in the process. Poetry, in particular, offers special challenges, but one type of poem that is manageable for the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom is "haiku,"…

Fundamental learning abilities related to the implicit encoding of sequential structure have been postulated to underlie language acquisition and processing. However, there is very little direct evidence to date supporting such a link between implicit statistical learning and language. In three experiments using novel methods of assessing implicit…

In this study, we compared the effects of two experimental multiple-strategy approaches (content-area comprehension and vocabulary) to typical fourth-grade social studies instructional practices. An 18-week, cluster-randomized study was conducted to estimate effects measured by normative-referenced reading comprehension and vocabulary measures and…

Story problems either bring students to a screeching halt or send them into a frenzied search for numbers and operations. They cause greater anxiety, still, in English language learners. These problems are often the nemesis of many a math teacher. This author grappled with this challenge in the context of teaching a series of lessons on integers…

For many years, practitioners have heard that middle level teachers are teachers of reading. As the standards movement gains strength, it is even more crucial that teachers explicitly teach key vocabulary that makes their students "insiders" when it comes to understanding the content areas. This article reminds the reader of the principles for…

The field of community art within higher education has made tremendous strides in the past two decades. The origins of community visual arts programming are ambiguous and traceable to multiple time periods and cultural contexts. However, in contemporary practices, higher education institutions are slowly adopting a greater priority for community…