The purpose of this dissertation is three-fold: to further the understanding of grammar learning strategies (GLS) that students at an American university use when they engage in language study sessions on their own, in technology-enhanced language learning (TELL) outside of the classroom; to examine how previous language learning experience (PLLE)…

There is a growing body of research from various perspectives in heritage language (henceforth HL) acquisition as an emerging field. Some studies proposed that HL acquisition is a differential acquisition compared with the baseline language (i.e., the language spoken by the parents or caregivers) (Kupisch & Rothman, 2018; Dubiel &…

Paradoxes are particularly problematic in literacy as they often complicate learning. However, identifying and examining them can also tell us something about the inherent problems within social, political, and educational systems. This paper reports on an analysis of a total of 205 AJLL articles and editorials, published between 2011 and 2021.…

The problem addressed by this study was children's impeded oral language development when parents do not engage them in frequent conversational exchanges during the infant and toddler years. The purpose of the study was to explore parent behaviors and perceptions. Two questions guided the study: when do parents talk with their children? and how do…

During acquisition, children must learn both the meanings of words and how to interpret them in context. For example, children must learn the logical semantics of the scalar quantifier "some" and its pragmatically enriched meaning: 'some but not all'. Some studies have shown that 'scalar implicature' -- that "some" implies…

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children with cochlear implants (CwCIs) constitute a heterogeneous population. A multitude of factors influence their spoken language development. There is evidence that CwCIs follow similar trajectories in language development as typically developing (TD) children but there is a lack of research on specific types of…

In the first year of life, infants' speech perception becomes attuned to the sounds of their native language. This process of early phonetic learning has traditionally been framed as phonetic category acquisition. However, recent studies have hypothesized that the attunement may instead reflect a perceptual space learning process that does not…

Background: Despite accumulated evidence that language development depends on basic cognitive processes, the balance in contributions of verbal and non-verbal cognitive skills to language abilities is still underexplored. Little is known about which cognitive measures best predict the degree of severity in children with language disorder (LD).…

This article aims to explore the conditions for children's language and literacy learning in 153 Swedish preschools with children one to five years. The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS-3) is used to evaluate preschool quality, focusing on the subscale of Language and literacy activities. The study draws on Bronfenbrenner's…

Second language proficiency may be related to first language acquisition (Ganschow & Sparks, 1991), but relatively little is known about the relation between first and second language grammatical proficiency in primary school children who are in their first stages of foreign language learning. This study aims to determine whether differences…

Children learn words in a social environment, facilitated in part by social cues from caregivers, such as eye-gaze and gesture. A common assumption is that social cues convey either perceptual or social information, depending on the age of the child. In this review of research on word learning and social cues during early childhood, we propose…

The interrogative sentence expression of 22 children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFA) was tested using an induced experimental paradigm and compared with two groups of typical developing children matched by chronological age and language age. Results from the present study demonstrated that the interrogative sentence expression…

Bilingual children are a more heterogenous group than their monolingual counterparts with respect to the sources of variation in their language learning environments, as well as the wide individual variation in their language abilities. Such heterogeneity in both individual difference factors and language abilities argues for the importance of an…

Research on how COVID-19 school closures impacted the learning of young children is still sparse, and the broader implications of these findings have yet to be fully explored. In this study, we examine the impacts of COVID-19 school closures on language and literacy development in a state-funded pre-K program in a Florida school district. Using…

Decentralized from decision-making processes, women have been placed at the periphery. Their silencing has been fundamental and intentional on the part of patriarchal institutions, for the sake of keeping them behind the discursive scene. To this effect, this paper examines the rebirth of women from prior states whereby they used to be denied the…