In Mauritius, Kreol is the home language of the majority of school children, while English is the main language of literacy and the main written medium of instruction as from the first year of primary schooling. This has had a backwash effect on the preschool sector, where English is introduced. A cross-sectional study of local preschools revealed…

This article focuses on biliteracy development of English and Spanish through the practical strategy of systematically labeling the classroom within the context of daily classroom activities and providing children with various opportunities to use the words throughout the day. Using the foundational work related to classroom labels from Pinnell…

This study examines whether task-modality (speaking vs. speaking+writing) influences first language (L1) use in task-based English as a foreign language (EFL) learner-learner interaction. Research on the topic has shown that different task-modality triggers different learning opportunities with collaborative speaking tasks drawing learners'…

This paper reports on a one year, mixed-methods longitudinal case study investigating the neglected area of the perceived reasons why participants forget vocabulary knowledge. The participants were 43 fourth year male Saudi EFL majors at King Abdulaziz University KAU, Saudi Arabia. Quantitative and qualitative data including self-reported…

Intercultural Communicative Competence is a paramount goal of modern foreign language teaching. It is the ability to communicate in culturally sensitive and contextually appropriate ways with speakers from other cultures. Being able to apologize is one component of this competence. Uttering apologies allows learners to rectify breaches of social…

Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs, parent-completed language development checklists) are a helpful tool to assess language in children who are unused to interaction with unfamiliar adults. Generally, CDIs are completed in written form, but in developing country settings parents may have insufficient literacy to complete them alone. We…

This study investigated Romanian high school students' use of digital tools for learning vocabulary in English. Although students have a wide range of technological affordances at their disposal, little is known about how they make use of them or the extent to which they are aware of how to use them in their vocabulary learning. The study features…

This paper investigated some dominant features and influential factors in the formation and developmental process of the English mental lexicon of Chinese EFL learners. Data were collected by means of word tests. The result of the data analysis shows: (1) Chinese EFL learners acquire very little of the overall word knowledge; and (2) aspects of…

In this study, we examined 5th grade students' levels of vocabulary knowledge and syntactic awareness relative to their reading comprehension performance. The aim was to explore the contributions of vocabulary and syntactic awareness as potential sources of reading comprehension difficulty for these readers. Overall, we found that both vocabulary…

Several recent studies have explored the applicability of the preferential attachment principle to account for vocabulary growth. According to this principle, network growth can be described by a process in which existing nodes recruit new nodes with a probability that is an increasing function of their connectivity within the existing network.…

Is parental language mixing related to vocabulary acquisition in bilingual infants and children? Bilingual parents (who spoke English and another language; n = 181) completed the Language Mixing Scale questionnaire, a new self-report measure that assesses how frequently parents use words from two different languages in the same sentence, such as…

An essential element of science instruction is content literacy. In order to improve literacy specific to science, vocabulary must be addressed. As Jitendra et al. (2004) pointed out, "because learning vocabulary during independent reading is very inefficient for students with reading difficulties, vocabulary and word learning skills must be…

The close relationship between children's vocabulary size and their later academic success has led researchers to explore how vocabulary development might be promoted during the early school years. We describe a study that explored the effectiveness of naturalistic classroom storytelling as an instrument for teaching new vocabulary to 6- to…

Zoom in on the academic skills students are required to learn in reading, writing, speaking/listening, and language! This book cuts through all of the Common Core jargon and gets right to the heart of what students need to learn now. "Big Skills for the Common Core" is packed with engaging strategies you can use immediately to improve your…

Researchers have demonstrated that words with high numbers of features (NOF) are recognized more quickly than words with low NOF. One difficulty in testing theories of word recognition with paradigms that present words in isolation, however, is that these paradigms can produce task demands not present in naturalistic reading situations. Extending…