This paper reviews recent experimental findings that inform our understanding of the development of reading comprehension. Studies investigating children who have specific difficulties with reading comprehension provide considerable information concerning the process involved in successful reading comprehension. This literature highlights aspects…

Oral proficiency ratings, based on the ACTFL Guidelines and derived from live or simulated oral proficiency interviews (SOPIs), enjoy widespread use in the United States. In particular, college foreign language departments have increasingly adopted oral proficiency ratings as a way of establishing standards for language or graduation requirements.…

The effects of a fluency building math program on addition and subtraction computational skills were evaluated using a multiple probe across subjects design. Two students with developmental disabilities and one student with attentional difficulties participated in a supplemental intervention using the Great Leaps Math program. Analyses indicated…

Comparison of Vietnamese-Australians' perception and production of the English compound-phrasal contrast with that of native English-speaking Australians indicated that the number of syllables and consonant clusters alien to Vietnamese phonology and length of residence in Australia were major factors affecting the Vietnamese-Australians'…

"Dialogic Reading" is an interactive shared picture book reading practice designed to enhance young children's language and literacy skills. During the shared reading practice, the adult and the child switch roles so that the child learns to become the storyteller with the assistance of the adult, who functions as an active listener and…

"Sound Foundations," a literacy curriculum designed to teach phonological awareness to preliterate children, focuses exclusively on phoneme identity (that is, different words can start and end with the same sound). It works from the principle that phonemic awareness is necessary but not sufficient to reading, which depends on the…

"Waterford Early Reading Level One"[TM] is an emergent literacy curriculum that uses computer-based technology to prepare children for reading. It begins with a tutorial to familiarize the child with the computer and mouse and a reading placement evaluation to assess and determine whether a child should work on "Level One"…

Comprehension is the ultimate aim of reading and listening. How do children develop the ability to comprehend written and spoken language, and what can be done to help those who are having difficulties? This book presents cutting-edge research on comprehension problems experienced by children without any formal diagnosis as well as those with…

English Language Development (ELD) and Academic English Development (AED) curricula in most public schools lack a communicative method and consist mostly of dry, meaningless grammar lessons devoid of relevance and authentic context. The purpose of this project is to develop guidelines to teach English language to elementary school children…

It has been observed that there is a strong association between the inherent (lexical) aspect of verbs and the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology (the aspect hypothesis; Andersen & Shirai, 1994). To investigate why such an association is observed, this study examined the influence of inherent aspect and learners' first language (L1) on the…

We examined how children with and without oral language (word-finding) difficulties (WFD) perform on oral reading (OR) versus silent reading recognition (SRR) tasks when reading the same words and how lexical factors influenced OR accuracy, error patterns, and nature of miscues. Primary-grade students were administered an experimental reading…

This article presents results from 2 studies comparing 3 approaches to teaching vocabulary during storybook reading: (a) contextual instruction, based on connecting words to their use in books and to children's personal experience; (b) analytical instruction, which enhances contextual instruction with semantic analysis of words in contexts other…

The current study examined the effects of Korean elementary school teachers' accents on their students' listening comprehension. It also examined students' attitudes toward teachers with American-accented English (a native speaker model) and Korean-accented English (a nonnative speaker model). A matched-guised technique was used. A Korean American…

This article examines what one university has done to prepare for its program review for recognition by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), a Specialized Professional Association (SPA) of NCATE. The history of the standards movement within higher…

This paper analyses the effects of manipulating the cognitive complexity of L2 oral tasks on language production. It specifically focuses on self-repairs, which are taken as a measure of accuracy since they denote both attention to form and an attempt at being accurate. By means of a repeated measures design, 42 lower-intermediate students were…