Many students arrive at middle school without the academic language skills they need to read sophisticated texts with comprehension. In particular, English language learners and students from low-income backgrounds attending underresourced, urban middle schools lack opportunities to learn the thousands of academic words they need to succeed. To…

The goal of this paper was to examine promising effects of a bilingual family literacy program: to track the changes of families' literacy activities through a bilingual family literacy intervention, and to examine the children literacy gains in both Chinese and English across socioeconomic sub-groups. The intervention was an eight-week, two hours…

In two experiments we examined how children's nonword pronunciations are influenced by learning words. In Experiment 1, children pronounced nonwords before and after learning words sharing orthographic rimes with the nonwords. These rimes varied in spelling-to-sound consistency and regularity. Children's nonword pronunciations were more sensitive…

The present longitudinal study examines the role of caregiver speech in language development, especially syntactic development, using 47 parent-child pairs of diverse SES background from 14 to 46 months. We assess the diversity (variety) of words and syntactic structures produced by caregivers and children. We use lagged correlations to examine…

Although learning objectives are a hallmark of lesson planning, it is rare for these to be shared with learners, even though best practices suggest doing so. This article examines the practice of establishing purpose for English language learners as a means for developing conceptual schemas. Participants in this study were 332 southern California…

The goal of this study was to examine the mechanisms underlying associations between neighborhood socioeconomic advantage and children's achievement trajectories between ages 54 months and 15 years. Results of hierarchical linear growth models based on a diverse sample of 1,364 children indicate that neighborhood socioeconomic advantage was…

The study investigated how second language (L2) learners self-assessed word knowledge on a page of text taken from a graded reader. The case study subjects were five Thai high school learners of English. They were asked to assess their word knowledge using a page of continuous text. Data gained through observation, interviews, self-assessment and…

Purpose: This study examined whether English-only vocabulary instruction or English vocabulary instruction enhanced with Spanish bridging produced greater word learning in young Spanish-speaking children learning English during a storybook reading intervention while considering individual language characteristics. Method: Twenty-two…

Songs and stories have a strong relationship to each other and have the capacity to boost brain development, increase vocabulary, and promote future academic success. The sounds and foundational structures of reading and singing provide young children with successful pathways for advancing language skills, increasing memory, and promoting emerging…

This paper reports findings from a case study of the amount of explicit vocabulary focus (EVF) that occurred in a week of classes for one group of upper intermediate students in an intensive English program (IEP). To assess EVF, instruction from a total of 25 hours of classes was analyzed to see if the number of EVF events was more connected with…

Research examined the influence of native vocabulary development on cross-language transfer of phonemic awareness. Participants were Spanish-speaking kindergartners learning English in immersion classrooms. Results indicated that limited Spanish vocabulary development negatively influenced cross-language transfer of phonemic awareness to English.…

The present study investigated Japanese students' EFL vocabulary development through e-mail interactions with a native English speaker (NS), with primary focus on students' imitation of new words. According to sociocultural theory, learners can internalize new linguistic knowledge by imitating an expert's expressions to create his/her own…

Serial-order short-term memory (STM), as opposed to item STM, has been shown to be very consistently associated with lexical learning abilities in cross-sectional study designs. This study investigated longitudinal predictions between serial-order STM and vocabulary development. Tasks maximizing the temporary retention of either serial-order or…

According to the Theory of Multiple Intelligences of Howard Gardner, there are eight intelligences. In the present study with two FLES classes, 35 students were asked to present Spanish vocabulary to their class to link their preferences of techniques used to introduce the vocabulary to their classmates with a spectrum of their multiple…

A reading-writing initiative began in 2011-12 at the University of Toronto as a partnership between an East Asian Studies (EAS) department and an English Language Learning (ELL) Program. In this institution, students are expected to enter into scholarly discussions in their first year essays, yet many (both native English speakers and non-native…