This article presents arguments for using listening and reading activities as an option for techniques in grammar pedagogy. It describes two possible approaches: Processing Instruction (PI) and Enriched Input (EI), and examples of their key features are included in the appendices. The article goes on to report on a classroom based quasi-experiment…

Purpose: To examine concurrently and retrospectively the language abilities of children with specific reading comprehension deficits ("poor comprehenders") and compare them to typical readers and children with specific decoding deficits ("poor decoders"). Method: In Study 1, the authors identified 57 poor comprehenders, 27 poor decoders, and 98…

The present study used a within-subjects design to examine the effect of the type of written exercise on L2 vocabulary retention. Using input for the meaning and usage of the new words from a specially prepared minidictionary, university intensive English program students (n = 154) practiced target vocabulary in three types of written exercises…

In this exploratory study, we examine the role of literacy in the acquisition of second-language (L2) oral skills through a partial replication of Jenefer Philp's (2003) study of recasts in native speaker (NS)-non-native speaker (NNS) interaction. The principal research question was the following: Is the ability to recall a recast related to the…

Research in second language acquisition and reading in particular indicate that certain literacy skills transfer across languages. This study examines the reading strategies used by advanced Korean and Chinese ESL learners. Particular attention is devoted to how word recognition and processing skills developed in learners' native languages (L1)…

Reform in the fields of adolescent and content area literacy have focused on broadening a definition of literacy beyond the ability to read and write. In a broader definition the language processes of reading, writing, speaking and listening become literacy tools to engage students in the learning of concepts and afford the learner ways to…

The aim of this study was to find ways to improve online reading and vocabulary learning. Various new types of online reading comprehension and vocabulary development programs and tests were compared in this study to consider how useful they may be for guiding individual or classroom L2 vocabulary instruction. It explored how these programs seek…

The accelerating rate of data generation and resulting publications are taxing the ability of scientific investigators to stay current with the emerging literature. This problem, acute in science, is not uncommon in other areas. New approaches to managing this explosion of information are needed. While it is only possible to read one paper or…

Received conceptualizations of scientific literacy are grounded in (1) the notions of "knowledge", "concepts", and "skills" that science students have to "acquire", "appropriate", or "construct" or (2) the notion of "practices" to which they have to be "enculturated" so that they become part of a "community of practice". All such notions…

A method for assessing the cognitive and linguistic stages of second language learning in individuals is discussed. The approach is based on a psycholinguistic theory that views language learning as a process of concept formation in three domains: cognitive, cultural, and linguistic. According to the model presented, Spanish-English bilingual…

This book presents an integrated theory of cognitive development in infancy and early childhood, emphasizing the role of language in memory, processing narratives, forming concepts, and understanding others' intentions. Chapter 1, "Language, Cognition, and Culture in Developmental Perspective," presents the experiential theoretical…

Using techniques of inference appraisal suggested by T. A. van Dijk and R. J. Sternberg, a study investigated whether by assigning particular writing tasks it would be possible to influence the way readers produce inferences about a text. Subjects, 52 ninth grade students, read especially prepared booklets and completed either a paraphrasing,…

Three studies are presented, each of which is a comparison of the acquisition of an aspect of the French verb system by three groups of speakers. The speakers are: young Anglophones learning French as a second language in an early French immersion program in Montreal; young monolingual Francophones attending elementary French language schools in…

This paper reports on the process of modifying the ModelCreator item generation system to produce output in multiple languages. In particular, Japanese and Spanish are now supported in addition to English. The addition of multilingual functionality was considerably facilitated by the general formulation of our natural language generation system,…

This study claimed that the ability of bilingual children to solve metalinguistic problems depends upon the demands of a given problem for analysis of knowledge or control of processing. It examined two hypotheses concerning bilingualism and metalinguistic problem-solving: (1) that bilingual children would be more advanced than monolingual…