In several of his papers, Charles S. Peirce illustrates processes of interpreting and understanding signs by examples from second language vocabulary teaching and learning. The insights conveyed by means of these little pedagogical scenarios are not meant as contributions to the psychology of second language learning, but they aim at elucidating…

Reading fluency has traditionally been recognized as a competency associated with word recognition and comprehension. As readers become more automatic in word identification they are able to devote less attention and cognitive resources to word decoding and more to text comprehension. The act of reading itself has been associated with growth in…

Orthographic mapping (OM) involves the formation of letter-sound connections to bond the spellings, pronunciations, and meanings of specific words in memory. It explains how children learn to read words by sight, to spell words from memory, and to acquire vocabulary words from print. This development is portrayed by Ehri (2005a) as a sequence of…

A well-developed academic vocabulary is foundational for understanding academic texts used in elementary and secondary classrooms. In-depth word knowledge is critical to understanding the abstract concepts and complex language structures of text. Students with learning disabilities and English language learners both characteristically have limited…

Lexical inferencing is an important vocabulary learning strategy. Unfortunately, almost all research on this issue has been carried out in the reading context. This study is the first to directly measure lexical inferencing success in listening, by both native (N?=?47) and nonnative (N?=?30) speakers of English. It analysed the effects of…

Inquiry-based active learning in science is helpful to all students but especially to those who have a hearing loss. For many deaf or hard of hearing students, the English language may be their second language, with American Sign Language (ASL) being their primary language. Therefore, many of the accommodations for the deaf are similar to those…

The present study sought to examine the improvement in vocabulary comprehension and retention of Saudi English as foreign language female students at King Abdul Aziz University as a result of integrating YouTube in their reading classes. The study also investigated the perceptions of both students as well as teachers towards the inclusion of…

The purpose of this preliminary study was to determine whether incorporating vocabulary instruction in individual reading fluency interventions for English Language Learners (ELLs) would improve reading comprehension. Two vocabulary instructional procedures were contrasted with a fluency-building only condition in an alternating-treatments design…

While most studies on L2 vocabulary learning through input have addressed learners' vocabulary uptake from written text, this study focuses on audio-visual input. In particular, we investigate the effects of enhancing video by (1) adding different types of L2 subtitling (i.e. no captioning, full captioning, keyword captioning, and glossed keyword…

Guided by the conceptual framework for next generation designs for mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) in informal setting, our study investigates how mobile devices impact the learning practices and habits amongst adult distant learners of English at a higher education institution in China. Data sources include quantitative data of 148…

This article reports on a language learning system and a program designed to help students with academic vocabulary in the New Zealand university computer science department. The system is a learner-friendly corpus-based tool that allows students to look up lexico-grammatical patterns of a given word in academic writing. The program, based on a…

Background: This article investigated the potential of Grade 3 English Second Language (ESL) teachers' vocabulary development practices to equip learners in English-deprived environments with English vocabulary requisite for transition to Grade 4 where English is the Language of Learning and Teaching and where learning to read gives way to reading…

Shared-book reading is a well-established intervention to foster vocabulary development. Factors influencing its effectiveness are, however, less well studied, particularly with regard to story-delivery. We contrasted a read-aloud with a free storytelling approach and tested effects on vocabulary learning. In the first study, 83 preschoolers aged…

This article is about an Action Research project carried out at a public Institution in Sincelejo, Colombia. The research purpose was to determine the effect of transactional communication strategies (TCS) on pre-service teachers' speaking skill. In a diagnostic stage, problems in the speaking skill were identified then an action stage was carried…

The effectiveness of explicit instruction, within the context of strategy development in learners, has been widely accepted for several years. However, the methods used within explicit vocabulary instruction are varied and comparatively few studies have directly compared methods. This study investigates the type of instruction (in a visual or…