In a simultaneous bilingual education, there are many factors that can affect its success, primarily the age of the child and socio-cognitive elements. This phenomenon can be initially studied in the first lexical productions of either language in a child. The present study focuses on the early lexical developments of a child, who lives in the…

Early language development predicts later reading competence, but does reading to young children enhance the language interaction between them and their parents? Automatic assessment of language interaction now yields adult word counts, conversational turn counts and child vocalization counts. This study had 98 families return reading activity…

Guided by Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological theory of human development and Moll's theory of funds of knowledge, the aim of this qualitative study was to examine the beliefs of parents and early childhood teachers on (a) the language development of Spanish-speaking preschool dual language learners (DLLs) and (b) how they can collaborate to support…

The results of previous research on the "Language for Learning" programme suggest that it produces positive effects on the intellectual, language, and social skills of young children with and without disabilities [Benner, G. J., Trout, A., Nordness, P. N., Nelson, J. R., Knobel, M. L., Epstein, A.,…Epstein, M. H. (2002). "The…

This dissertation explores parallels between Complementizer Phrase (CP) and Determiner Phrase (DP) semantics, syntax, and morphology--including similarities in case-assignment, subject-verb and possessor-possessum agreement, subject and possessor semantics, and overall syntactic structure--in first language acquisition. Applying theoretical…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate Elementary and Secondary teachers' attitudes, efficacy, and cultural proficiency with mainstream ELL students. This study further explored teachers' beliefs toward professional development, differentiating curriculum and instruction, and understanding language acquisition with mainstream ELL students. The…

Given breakthroughs in information and communication technologies (ICTs), language learners are increasingly presented with opportunities to advance their proficiency in a target language (herein English as a foreign language or EFL). The attitudes of learners toward the use of ICTs (ICT attitudes) can be predictive of their adoption of ICTs for…

Research on recognition of complex words has primarily focused on affixational complexity in concatenative languages. This dissertation investigates both templatic and affixational complexity in Hebrew, a templatic language, with particular focus on the role of the root and template morphemes in recognition. It also explores the role of morphology…

In this dissertation, I explored the lives of 10 children who were diagnosed with a language disorder. The children were enrolled in a therapeutic half-day speech-language preschool classroom for 3- and 4-year-old children within a public-school system in the rural Southeast. The research included a 15-week mini-ethnographic case study utilizing…

This paper outlines the rationale behind L2 process writing and Enquiry-Based Learning (EBL) approaches adopted in order to design a course within a modern language degree to bridge the gap between language and culture elements of the programme. This was achieved by creating an environment that replicates that of a researcher and by placing…

Partnerships are dynamic, negotiated spaces encompassing community organizations and interprofessionals. Partnerships support young children and families as they transition from home to school. Interprofessionals create a culture for learning and accessible resources. Early childhood centers, public health and libraries develop collaborative…

Producing pronouns involves linguistic and social-cognitive knowledge because children must learn words and understand pronouns' changing referents. This study examined pronoun production longitudinally in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 15), whose social-cognition might impair pronoun use, and in typically developing (TD; n…

Bilingual children show a number of advantages in the domain of communication. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether differences in interactions are present before productive language skills emerge. For a duration of 5 minutes, 64 parents and their 14-month-old infants explored a decorated room together. The coordination of their…

Extensive bodies of literature examining child language acquisition and early literacy development indicate that the language and literacy opportunities young children have at home and in school settings, including the nature of their language interactions with adults and their exposure to books and stories, are consequential for mastery of…

In this article I discuss the contributions to this Special Issue of "Language Learning" on orders and sequences in second language (L2) development. Using a list of questions, I attempt to characterize what I see as the strengths, limitations, and unresolved issues in the approaches to L2 development represented in this Special Issue. I…