This study examined the relationship between nonmainstream American English (NMAE) dialect use and various emergent literacy skills among typically developing children in prekindergarten. Correlation and regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between children's production of NMAE forms (i.e., dialect variation [DVAR]) and their…

This paper discusses the use of multidimensional analysis (MA) of learner language to promote the awareness of linguistic concepts such as register and variation. Our research explores the introduction of learner register awareness by using MA of learner language in the field of university Foreign Language Teaching (FLT). In this context, a group…

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that word reading accuracy, not oral language, is associated with spelling performance in school-age children. We compared fourth grade spelling accuracy in children with specific language impairment (SLI), dyslexia or both (SLI/dyslexia) to their typically developing grade-matched peers.…

This article explores uninvestigated issues in Cantonese and "Hoisan-wa" language maintenance from an ethnic Chinese diaspora point of view. Data come from a larger study looking at Frog Story narratives from 140 Cantonese-English bilingual children in California. Fourteen of these children were found to display uniquely…

In October, 2011, Age of Learning, Inc., creator of ABCmouse.com "Early Learning Academy" conducted a nationwide survey of 500 kindergarten teachers on the subject of children's preparedness for kindergarten. The survey revealed that two-thirds of America's kindergarten teachers believe most young children are academically unprepared for school…

Writers typically produce their writing in bursts. In this article, the authors examine written language bursts in a sample of 33 children aged 11 years with specific language impairment. Comparisons of the children with specific language impairment with an age-matched group of typically developing children (n = 33) and a group of younger,…

Purpose: Students with language-learning disabilities (LLD) demonstrate difficulties with written language, especially in the areas of productivity, complexity, and grammar. It is not clear how these deficits affect their performance on high-stakes tests, such as those required by the No Child Left Behind Act (U.S. Department of Education, 2002).…

This paper reports findings from a study on the discourse functions of basic "wh"-clefts such as "what our brains do is complicated information processing" in 160 lectures drawn from the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus. Like much linguistic research on this academic genre, the investigation is motivated by the…

The Shepherd Centre is a nonprofit early intervention program in New South Wales, Australia, providing listening and spoken language services through an interdisciplinary team approach to children with hearing loss and their families. The program has been providing distance services to families in rural and remote areas of Australia and in other…

Oral language competence (skill in everyday talking and listening) is critical in the early years of school in two key respects: it underpins the transition to literacy in the early years, and is the means by which children form and maintain interpersonal relationships in the school setting. In this paper, the role of oral language competence with…

During the last decade, researchers of foreign language pedagogy have become increasingly interested in the "language-literature divide" (Donato and Brooks 2004). The purpose of the current study is to contribute to this growing body of research by investigating the extent to which whole class discussions in three third-year…

The present study examines the relationships among the variables believed to affect Spanish undergraduates' willingness to communicate in English. The participants were 195 students majoring in several degrees at the University of Oviedo. A questionnaire and a standardized English Test were administered to the students in February-March 2013.…

This study investigates the attitudes towards, and practices of, computer-assisted autonomous learning in learning English of 160 students from three different higher education institutions in China. To do this, a questionnaire was completed by 160 participants, and follow-up in-depth interviews were undertaken with six participants and six of…

This study attempted to unveil the effect of metadiscourse instruction on the improvement of the speaking ability of Iranian EFL learners. After the administration of a language proficiency test, 34 homogeneous participants were assigned into the experimental and control groups. Then, the two groups were compared on their speaking ability. After…

While much has been written about task-based language teaching (TBLT), research examining teachers' understandings of what TBLT means remains limited. This article explores the understandings of TBLT of three Chinese secondary school teachers of English and the implementation of TBLT in their lessons. Narrative accounts were constructed for each…