This article reports on the design and use of a profiler for lexical sophistication (i.e., use of advanced vocabulary), which was created to assess the lexical richness of intermediate and advanced Swedish second language (L2) learners' French and Italian. It discusses how teachers' judgments (TJs) of word difficulty can contribute to the…

This paper reports on a quasi-experimental study of the effect of different vocabulary study materials and strategies used by upper-intermediate English as a foreign language students in higher education. Students were assigned a selection of 163 words from the Academic Word List and were provided with different types of study materials. They were…

This article reports a small-scale study that investigated the effect of (1) an instructional method, viz. directing learners' attention to formulaic sequences (FS) in a text, and (2) typographic salience, i.e. bold typeface and underlined, on foreign-language (FL) learners' recall of FS and single words (SW). Twenty-eight FL learners read a…

Mastery of grammatical gender is difficult to achieve in a second language (L2). This study investigates whether persistent difficulty with grammatical gender often observed in the speech of otherwise highly proficient L2 learners is best characterized as a production-specific performance problem, or as difficulty with the retrieval of gender…

This article discusses why early and sustained vocabulary development is important for listening and reading comprehension development and presents findings from 8 studies implemented with children of mostly low socioeconomic status in settings from day care to first grade. Program interventions were based on learning new vocabulary developed out…

Children who enter kindergarten with low oral language skills are at great risk for reading problems, especially in the areas of vocabulary and comprehension. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of two instructional vocabulary methods of storybook reading with children who exhibit typically developing language skills and…

Would you like your students to be excited when they read a new word and keen to work out its meaning straight away? This book will turn them into word detectives, ready to tackle any new word they come across. And when writing, would you like them to make sentences that have interesting and descriptive words like "shamble," "ravenous" or…

The purpose of this study was to determine the reading achievement effects of a school-year-long program of sustained silent reading in a middle school. Students' scores on the Stanford Achievement Test, Ninth Edition across three years (2006, 2007, and 2008) were analyzed to test eleven null hypotheses. A 3 x 3 repeated measures factorial ANOVA…

Learning a phonetic category (or any linguistic category) requires integrating different sources of information. A crucial unsolved problem for phonetic learning is how this integration occurs: how can we update our previous knowledge about a phonetic category as we hear new exemplars of the category? One model of learning is Bayesian Inference,…

This study examines the use of a yes/no test as a placement measure in a university Spanish foreign language program. Yes/no tests measure word recognition and have been shown to correlate well with other language proficiency tests. The main advantage of using a yes/no test as a placement tool is its ease of creation and administration. We…

The key question of how the brain codes the meaning of words and pictures is the focus of vigorous debate. Is there a "semantic hub" in the temporal poles where these different inputs converge to form amodal conceptual representations? Alternatively, are there distinct neural circuits that underpin our comprehension of pictures and words?…

In order to successfully complete any college-level courses, English Language Learner (ELL) students must be able to read and comprehend a large volume of academic information. However, many instructors are completely overwhelmed in teaching their respective subject areas and are academically unprepared to teach ELL students appropriate reading…

Children reported the strategies they used when identifying unfamiliar words while reading. Study 1 compared 39 poor readers (M age = 10 years, 7 months) with 2 groups of average readers, one of the same reading age (N = 39; M age = 8 years, 5 months) and the other (N = 31) matched on chronological age. Study 2 included 241 children aged 7 to 11…

English teachers face myriad demands every day that include not only helping students read literature in interesting and engaging ways but also attending to the needs of students challenged by the demands of more complex and sophisticated texts. Vocabulary learning is at the heart of this struggle for many students, especially for English language…

The influential report "Teaching Children to Read: An Evidenced-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction" presented recommendations for daily literacy instruction in five key areas: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Applying techniques to…