In two studies we investigated 2-year-old children's answers to predicate-focus questions depending on the preceding context. Children were presented with a successive series of short video clips showing transitive actions (e.g., frog washing duck) in which either the action (action-new) or the patient (patient-new) was the changing, and therefore…

This article describes a 6-year, districtwide staff-development project that was implemented in an attempt to change teacher attitudes and practices as they relate to English learners (ELs). The specific goals of the project were (a) to help the district's teachers develop the knowledge base, pedagogical skills, and professional attitudes required…

A major reading-achievement gap exists between English language learners and English-only students. In order for ELLs to experience school success, they must achieve English language proficiency. This article presents why vocabulary acquisition plays the most vital role in ELLs' learning of the English language. Factors include the severity and…

Purpose: Acquisition of prosodic control appears to evolve across development with younger children relying on durational cues and older children utilizing a broader spectrum of cues including fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration. This study aimed to determine whether unfamiliar listeners could identify prosodic contrasts produced by 4-,…

A shift from language-general to language-specific sound discrimination abilities has been largely attested in different populations of infants during the second half of the first year of life; however, data are still scarce regarding bilingual populations. Previous research with 4-, 8- and 12-month-old Catalan-Spanish bilingual infants had…

This study explores the nature of orthographic processing skills among French-speaking children in Grades 6 and 8 who are learning English at school as a second language (L2). Two aspects of orthographic processing skills are thought to form a convergent construct in monolingual beginning readers: word-specific knowledge (e.g. "rain-rane") and…

In this study we examine how native language, sex, and college major interact to influence accuracy and preferred strategy when performing mental rotation (MR). Native monolingual Chinese and English speakers rotated 3-D shapes while maintaining a concurrent verbal or spatial memory load. For English speakers, male physical science majors were…

This quasi-experimental study investigated the effects of an Internet-delivered universally designed depth of vocabulary intervention that targeted both English-speaking and Spanish-English-speaking students. Two hundred forty students, 49% of whom were Spanish-English bilinguals, participated in the 16-week intervention. Intervention students…

This paper studies the developmental stages of word initial consonant clusters (CCs) in the speech of six monolingual Israeli Hebrew (IH) acquiring hearing impaired children using cochlear implant (CI). Focusing on the patterns of cluster reduction, this study compares the CI children with typically-developing hearing children. All the CI…

Three experiments provide evidence that the conceptualization of moving objects and events is influenced by one's native language, consistent with linguistic relativity theory. Monolingual English speakers and bilingual Spanish/English speakers tested in an English-speaking context performed better than monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual…

Purpose: Identifying children with primary or specific language impairment (LI) in languages other than English continues to present a diagnostic challenge. This study examined the utility of English and Spanish nonword repetition (NWR) to identify children known to have LI. Method: Participants were 4 groups of school-age children (N = 187).…

The present study investigated the development of linguistic awareness in children exposed to the early learning of a second language in Grades 3-5 of primary school, i.e. between the ages of 8 and 10. The aim was to determine whether this bilingual experience enhanced the development of phonological awareness in beginning readers in a bilingual…

To examine the effects of bilingualism on cognitive control, we studied monolingual and bilingual young adults performing a flanker task with functional MRI. The trial types of primary interest for this report were incongruent and no-go trials, representing interference suppression and response inhibition, respectively. Response times were similar…

The present study takes as a point of departure Becker's analysis of the copula "be" in English monolingual data and focuses on the distribution of copula "be" in the data from two English/Spanish bilingual children. Our data analysis shows that, as in Becker's study, the distribution of copula omission in the bilingual data is determined by the…

Research using online comprehension measures with monolingual children shows that speed and accuracy of spoken word recognition are correlated with lexical development. Here we examined speech processing efficiency in relation to vocabulary development in bilingual children learning both Spanish and English (n=26 ; 2 ; 6). Between-language…