When children experience conflict in relationships with their teachers during early education, they perform more poorly on measures of language development and overall academic competence. Whereas children who have close relationships with teachers, often perform better on these measures. A close teacher-child relationship may be important for…

Using a picture pointing task, this study examines toddlers' processing of phonological alternations that trigger sound changes in connected speech. Three experiments investigate whether 2;5- to 3-year-old children take into account assimilations--processes by which phonological features of one sound spread to adjacent sounds--for the purpose of…

Many Aboriginal students face extraordinary challenges as they enter and move through the school system. The risk associated with poverty plays a large role in an Aboriginal child's early childhood development, including delayed cognitive and social development. As well, many Aboriginal students feel the neglect of their cultural heritage and the…

The Common Core Standards and the wide-spread state adoption have implications for music teachers. Alignment with English language arts Common Core Standards is discussed, with examples provided for elementary general music experiences. The author notes the challenge of retaining focus on the music domain while meeting the expectations of the…

The induction problems facing language learners have played a central role in debates about the types of learning biases that exist in the human brain. Many linguists have argued that some of the learning biases necessary to solve these language induction problems must be both innate and language-specific (i.e., the Universal Grammar (UG)…

The study explores the communication challenges faced by teacher trainees in teaching deaf learners and the opportunities that they present. A critical disabilities study approach within the qualitative paradigm was employed to collect interview data from 14 trainee teachers (6 were men and 8 women) and 5 of their specialist mentors (all of them…

Major advances in multimedia computer technology over the past decades have made sophisticated computer games readily available to the public. This, combined with the observation that most children, including those with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), show an affinity to computers, has led researchers to recognize the potential of computer…

We analyzed the differential processing of nouns and verbs in a lexical decision task. Moderate and high-frequency nouns and verbs were compared. The characteristics of our material were specified at the formal level (number of letters and syllables, number of homographs, orthographic neighbors, frequency and age of acquisition), and at the…

This study investigated the development of tense markers (e.g., past tense -ed) in children with cochlear implants (CIs) over a 3-year span. Nine children who received CIs before 30 months of age participated in this study at three, four, and five years postimplantation. Nine typical 3-, 4-, and 5-year- olds served as control groups. All children…

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (short form) was adapted for Samoan and Tongan speakers in New Zealand. The adaptation process drew upon language samples from Samoan and Tongan parent-child dyads with 20- and 26-month-old children and adult informants. The resulting 100-word language inventories in Samoan and Tongan, plus a…

A robust body of research shows that the most important factor in a child's healthy development is a positive parent-child relationship, characterized by warm, loving interactions in which parents and other caregivers sensitively respond to their child's cues and provide age-appropriate activities that nurture curiosity, exploration, and learning.…

This mixed-methods study examines middle school students' academic language development in the context of a year-long professional development project titled, Developing Content Area Academic Language (DCAAL). The purpose of DCAAL was to partner middle school teachers (n = 8) with a team of university researchers to explore how to integrate…

Early childhood educators (ECEs) play an important role in fostering language development in young children. In-service education, led by speech-language pathologists (SLPs), has a potential role in educating ECEs about language development. In this pilot study, 42 ECEs attended an in-service education program and completed pre- and…

The acquisition of systematic patterns and exceptions in different languages can be readily examined using the causative construction. Persian allows four types of causative structures, including one productive multiword structure (i.e. the light verb construction). In this study, we examine the development of all four structures in Persian child…

Understanding the relationship between teachers' use of language in teacher-led discourse (TLD; Toth, 2008) and opportunities for L2 development is a well-established area of SLA research. This study examines one teacher's role in creating such opportunities in TLD in her EFL classes in a state secondary school by examining the inner resources…