Suggests that becoming aware of the origins of common words and learning how more sophisticated words relate to historical developments can help students learn vocabulary. (RAE)

Responds to an article on the use of artificially developed sign language for the teaching of biology, and discusses the inaccuracies presented concerning the Technical Signs Project, which emphasizes the collection of existing signs rather than the artificial development of signs. Sign guidelines based on naturally developed signs are appended.…

Discusses the value of bilingual dictionaries. Using a list of common words drawn from several broad categories, the author attempted to find these words in the Collins-Robert and the Harraps dictionaries. Both dictionaries have very similar results although the Harraps performs slightly better in terms of correct entries. The proportion of words…

Examined whether infants succeed in mapping novel adjectives applied ostensively to individual objects and to other objects with the same property. Found that infants hearing a target labeled with novel adjectives were more likely than those hearing no novel words to choose a matching test object when all objects were drawn from same basic level…

Analyzes the linguistic notion of procedural vocabulary, proposing that several different vocabulary concepts are part of this type of vocabulary. The paper discusses the role of procedural vocabulary in discourse, suggesting that the concepts of schema and procedure are relevant for describing this type of vocabulary and categorizing it into two…

A theoretical perspective on acquiring sight vocabulary and developing meaningful vocabulary is presented. Dual Coding Theory assumes that cognition occurs in two independent but connected codes: a verbal code for language and a nonverbal code for mental imagery. The mixed research literature on using pictures in teaching sight vocabulary is…

An expert on vocabulary instruction, Allen reviews what we know as a profession to be of value to students and offers three types of practices that demonstrate meaningful vocabulary instruction. She also describes how vocabulary words can be used as a rich source of assessment. (Contains 1 figure.)

Through small-scale sampling of relevant specialized texts to craft hands-on inferential vocabulary tasks, both students and teachers can benefit from corpus linguistic information. By discovering ways to collect and access real data, second-language teachers can create topic-specific corpora and use software to sort and highlight the data to…

Written specifically for K-12 educators, this accessible book explains the processes involved in second-language acquisition and provides a wealth of practical strategies for helping English language learners (ELLs) succeed at reading. The authors integrate knowledge from two fields that often remain disconnected--linguistics and literacy--with a…

To what extent does language acquisition recruit domain-general processing mechanisms? In this dissertation, evidence concerning this question is garnered from the study of individual differences in infant speech perception and their predictive value with respect to language development in early childhood. In the first experiment, variation in the…

Vocabulary acquisition research has been paid attention these years (e.g. Beck, McKeown & McCaslin, 1983; Harley, 1996; Huckin, Haynes, & Coady, 1993; Zahar, Cobb & Spada, 2001). A serious methodologies had been reported, including applying learner dictionaries (Nesi, 1999; Tribble, 2003), using forms of visual glossing (Al-Seghayer,…

The increasing numbers of English language learners (ELLs) in Canadian schools pose a significant challenge to the standards-based provincial tests used to measure proficiency levels of all students from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This study investigated the extent to which reading item bundles or items on the Ontario Secondary…

Longitudinal research on reading curricula and skills that predict future reading achievement for African American males in special education is quite limited. Using a national sample over a five-year period, this study highlights reading skills most associated with later reading achievement for African American males in special education. For…

Community college developmental education students face numerous obstacles as they proceed through their years of higher education. One specific area of need is students' inadequate vocabularies. Advanced communication skills are an integral part of higher education, so students may be at an academic disadvantage if these skills are not…

The factors affecting the mastery of the host country's language by the children of immigrants are important in the study of immigration-related issues. This exploratory study analyses the possible link between parental socio-linguistic background factors (parent-child language choice, parental proficiency in L2, educational level, socio-economic…