This dissertation studies the realization of the rhythm of Taiwan Mandarin and focuses on the quality of its unstressed (neutral-tone) syllables. Taiwan Mandarin (TM) is often described as more syllable-timed than Standard Mandarin (SM). In TM, the unstressed syllables occur less frequently. The quality of the unstressed (neutral-tone) syllables…

What if you could barely understand what your teacher was saying? Imagine working mostly independently and silently, with limited opportunities to interact with others. ELL shadowing helps teachers better understand the classroom experience from an English language learner's point of view. The author describes how to implement this easily…

Few prior studies have examined degree of fidelity between raters' assessments of oral performances and objectively observable prosodic indices of accentedness. Prosodic indices of accentedness quantify trait-relevant variance, whereas rater background variables represent trait-irrelevant variance. The present study, therefore, investigated the…

International studies, such as the "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA), have shown that, in most participating countries, students who do not typically speak the test language at home reach lower levels of reading comprehension than students using the test language at home (Stanat & Christensen, "2006").…

This functional MRI study investigated the involvement of the left inferior parietal cortex (IPC) in spoken language production (Speech). Its role has been apparent in some studies but not others, and is not convincingly supported by clinical studies as they rarely include cases with lesions confined to the parietal lobe. We compared Speech with…

Two experiments explored the consolidation of spoken words, and assessed whether post-sleep novel competitor effects truly reflect engagement of these novel words in competition for lexical segmentation. Two types of competitor relationships were contrasted: the onset-aligned case (such as "frenzylk"), where the novel word is a close variant of…

Using the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, language comprehension and production were compared in a sample of 101,250 children aged 2 ; 00 to 9 ; 11 and a focus subsample of 38,845 children aged 2 ; 00 to 4 ; 11 from sixteen under-researched developing nations. In the whole sample, comprehension slightly exceeded production; correlations between…

Purpose: In this study, the authors used cued shadowing to examine children's phonological word-form representations by studying the effects of onset and rhyme primes on lexical access. Method: Twenty-five preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI; hereafter known as the SLI group), 24 age- and gender-matched children (AM group), and 20…

This study investigated the developmental variability of lip and tongue movement in 48 children and adults. Motion of the tongue-tip, tongue-body and lower lip was recorded using electromagnetic articulography during productions of sentences containing /t/, /s/, /l/, /k/ and /p/. Four groups of speakers participated in the study: (1) aged 6-7…

We present a meta-analysis reviewing studies that have focused on the relationship between dyslexia and nonword repetition. The results show that children with dyslexia have poorer nonword repetition skills when compared to both chronological-age and reading-level controls. However, the severity of the nonword repetition problem varies…

The purpose of this paper is to consider the importance of intervening with early literacy instruction at the preschool level. Research has found phonological awareness skills in preschool to be one of the most robust predictors of early reading success in a child's first few years of formal schooling. The efficacy of phonological awareness…

Two eye-tracking experiments tested how pitch prominence on a prenominal adjective affects contrast resolution in Japanese adult and 6-year old listeners. Participants located two animals in succession on displays with multiple colored animals. In Experiment 1, adults' fixations to the contrastive target (pink cat [right arrow] GREEN cat) were…

Listen and Talk is an early intervention and preschool program based in Seattle, Washington, that provides auditory-verbal education and therapy to children with hearing loss and their families. In addition, staff members provide consultations with public and private schools across the state. The mission of Listen and Talk is to teach children who…

This article examines the issues surrounding the mapping of the oral language development of Standard Australian English (SAE) in the early school years of remote and very remote Aboriginal education in the Northern Territory (NT). Currently, teachers in this context have 2 mandated documents as guides that chart the development of SAE oracy.…

A fundamental challenge facing students who are English Learners (ELs) is the interplay of oral language development--speaking and understanding a language--and literacy development--learning to read and write the language. This interplay is especially challenging because each of those developmental processes is complex in and of itself, and each…