This study took place at a medical college with 57 Arabic first-year students taking an intensive English course. The aim was to address the problems that learners experience when using the English tenses properly. The didactic model was developed and implemented in the study group only (27 students). Pre-, mid-, and post-tests were administered…

The present study explores the vocabulary development of bilingual children when neither of their languages has a minority language status. With both languages having high relative prestige, it is possible to address the impact of exposure variables: age of onset, length of exposure, and frequency of exposure (FoE) to both languages. Parents of 40…

This study explored how using graphic novel features in the writing process influenced the motivation and engagement of fifth grade boys to write. Participants used graphica features to visually draft their narrative essays before crafting their final writing piece. During the drafting process, students were encouraged to engage in the revision…

Supporting the reading comprehension and content knowledge acquisition of English language learners (ELs) requires instructional practices that continue beyond developing the foundational skills of reading. In particular, the challenges ELs face highlight the importance of teaching reading comprehension practices in the middle grades through…

This practitioner-based book provides different approaches for reaching an increasing population in today's schools - English language learners (ELLs). The recent development and adoption of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (CCSS-ELA/Literacy), the…

The cereal box design activity is intriguing both for its simplicity and the resourcefulness that it can generate in young people. Also, it lends itself to a variety of curriculums. It covers both consumerism and Design for the Environment (DfE) concepts broadly and in depth. The activity introduces a wide range of topics. They include graphic…

Vocabulary can be a key factor for success, central to a language, and paramount to a language learner. In such situation, the lexicon may be the most important component for learners (Grass and Selinker, 1994), and mastering of vocabulary is an essential component of second/foreign language teaching and learning that has been repeatedly…

This fascinating presentation of current research undoes numerous myths about how we most effectively learn new words in a second language. In clear, reader-friendly text, the author details the successful approach of IBI vocabulary instruction, which emphasizes the presentation of target vocabulary as input early on and the incremental (gradual)…

According to the age-of-acquisition hypothesis, words acquired early in life are processed faster and more accurately than words acquired later. Connectionist models have begun to explore the influence of the age/order of acquisition of items (and also their frequency of encounter). This study attempts to reconcile two different methodological and…

In any content area, teachers have opportunities to help their students develop more robust vocabularies; however, many content area teachers "know relatively little about effective instructional practices for vocabulary development" (Fisher & Frey, 2008). This article offers content area teachers three examples of rich opportunities for word…

Purpose: To determine the effects of noise and speech style on word learning in typically developing school-age children. Method: Thirty-one participants ages 9;0 (years;months) to 10;11 attempted to learn 2 sets of 8 novel words and their referents. They heard all of the words 13 times each within meaningful narrative discourse. Signal-to-noise…

This article describes both the benefits and the challenges of using "teachable moments" as a primary strategy for oral vocabulary instruction. It argues that children will need more intentional oral vocabulary instruction, right from the very beginning, if they are to develop the academic and content-rich vocabulary necessary to be successful in…

Purpose: To determine whether a clinically obtainable measure of audibility, the aided Speech Intelligibility Index (SII; American National Standards Institute, 2007), is more sensitive than the pure-tone average (PTA) at predicting the lexical abilities of children who wear hearing aids (CHA). Method: School-age CHA and age-matched children with…

This paper evaluates the proposal that general associative mechanisms underlie the earliest stages of word learning but that these same general mechanisms, operating over language input, enable children to identify domain-specific cues that ultimately help to constrain word learning, rendering children more sophisticated language users. As a…

We expand upon a previous proposal by Bloom and Wynn (1997) that young children learn about the meaning of number words by tracking their occurrence in particular syntactic environments, in combination with the discourse context in which they are used. An analysis of the Childes database (MacWhinney, 2000) reveals that the environments studied by…