Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature-based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts' features--the number of concepts they occur in ("distinctiveness/sharedness") and likelihood of co-occurrence ("correlational…

We addressed Deville and Chalhoub-Deville's (2006), Schoonen's (2012), and Xi and Mollaun's (2006) call for research into the contextual features that are considered related to person-by-task interactions in the framework of generalizability theory in two ways. First, we quantitatively synthesized the generalizability studies to determine the…

The oral re-telling of traditional tales, modelled by a storyteller and taught to children in school, can be understood as 'non-instrumental' practice in speaking and listening that emphasises oral language over the reading and writing of stories. While oral storytelling has significant benefits to children's education and development, it is…

Oral narratives are a commonly used, meaningful means of communication that reflects academic language. New state curriculum standards include narrative-related language expectations for young school-age children, including story grammar and complex language. This article provides a review of preschool narrative-based language intervention…

Now in its fourth edition and with extensive updated research, "Later Language Development" addresses the development of spoken and written language from Kindergarten through early adulthood. The information in this text is aligned to the Common Core State Standards and describes the critical connection between language development and…

This article reports on two presentations from the TCCRISLS 2014 which address a newly emerging area of inquiry--the interface between (LOA) and large-scale summative assessments. The surveyed papers propose that LOA should be introduced into summative testing to help test-takers to demonstrate their best performance. This article also makes links…

Recent studies suggest that Second Life (SL) is a useful tool for educational purposes, specifically for the language learning. However, few studies provide data regarding the effect of SL on speaking anxiety of English as foreign language (EFL) learners. Thus, this paper aims at reviewing the studies on the role of SL as a language learning tool…

This document is the second in a series of working papers that elaborate on a framework of four key stages in moving toward a common definition of English learner (EL), as described in the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) publication, "Toward a 'Common Definition of English Learner': Guidance for States and State Assessment…

This study examines the genetic and environmental etiology underlying the development of oral language and reading skills, and the relationship between them, over a long period of developmental time spanning middle childhood and adolescence. It focuses particularly on the differential relationship between language and two different aspects of…

A speech-language pathologist and former primary teacher who is now a researcher conducting action research with kindergarten teachers in northern rural Canadian classrooms collaborate in an analysis of one teacher's interactions with her students in a dramatic play center. We use three principles to show how the teacher supports children's…

The present study investigates the prosody/pragmatics interface in TBLT by extending the traditional morphological focus-on-form to a focus on intonational forms, with Spanish declaratives and imperatives. Twenty-eight intermediate L2 Spanish learners were assigned to one of two conditions that differed in the type of focus-on-form present during…

Three methodological approaches were applied to understand the role of interest and self-efficacy in reading and/or writing in students without and with persisting specific learning disabilities (SLDs) in literacy. For each approach students in grades 4 to 9 completed a survey in which they rated 10 reading items and 10 writing items on a Scale 1…

Flow represents a state of complete involvement and heightened intensity that leads to improved performance on a task (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1990). The notion of flow has the potential to provide worthwhile insights into the area of task engagement, yet the construct has received relatively little empirical attention by second language…

In this study, two alternative theoretical models were compared, in order to analyze which of them best explains primary school children's text comprehension skills. The first one was based on the distinction between two types of answers requested by the comprehension test: local or global. The second model involved texts' input modality: written…

The ongoing trend in research regarding feedback has been to explore quantitative assessment. Garnering support more recently is qualitative narrative feedback in support of formative assessment. This type of feedback offers insight into expectations as well as offer additional knowledge gained. It enables students to improve their performance…