The Reading Acceleration Program is a computerized program that improves reading and the activation of the error-detection mechanism in individuals with reading difficulty (RD) and typical readers (TRs). The current study aims to find the neural correlates for this effect in English-speaking 8-12-year-old children with RD and TRs using a…

The internet has developed into an important source of knowledge in recent times. It is used not just for engaging and entertaining users, but also for promoting language learning, especially for English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL and EFL) learners spending long hours using internet, 85% of all web pages are in English. This experimental…

In light of population aging, an understanding of factors that promote lifelong cognitive resilience is urgent. There is considerable evidence that education early in the life span, which promotes the development of literacy skills, leads to cognitive health and longevity, but the ways in which activity engagement in later adulthood affects…

A peer-review system that automatically evaluates and provides formative feedback on free-text feedback comments of students was iteratively designed and evaluated in college and high-school classrooms. Classroom assignments required students to write paper drafts and submit them to a peer-review system. When student peers later submitted feedback…

Purpose: This investigation was conducted to determine whether young children with autism spectrum disorders exhibited a canonical neural response to word stimuli and whether putative event-related potential (ERP) measures of word processing were correlated with a concurrent measure of receptive language. Additional exploratory analyses were used…

The present research examines the mechanisms underlying the comprehension of focus alternatives. In particular, we investigate whether listeners determine alternatives based on general semantic priming mechanisms or whether they only consider contrastive alternatives, elements that can replace the expression in focus. In a probe recognition…

Automated essay scoring (AES) generally computes essay scores as a function of macrofeatures derived from a set of microfeatures extracted from the text using natural language processing (NLP). In the "e-rater"® automated scoring engine, developed at "Educational Testing Service" (ETS) for the automated scoring of essays, each…

The present study investigated the metacognitive listening strategies among Saudi EFL medical students. The participants were 104 males and females, randomly selected to fill in the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ), developed and validated Vandergrift Goh, Mareschal, and Tafaghodtari (2006). The results revealed that…

This article presents a rationale for making idioms and their use a mainstay of the second language (L2) curriculum. First, it offers a definition of the elusive term "idiom" as a point of departure for the ensuing discussion. Second, it offers five specific reasons why idiom instruction should be integrated into the L2 curriculum: here,…

The present study investigates the comprehension of syntactic and affective prosody in adults with autism spectrum disorder without accompanying cognitive deficits (ASD w/o cognitive deficits) as well as age-, education- and gender-matched unimpaired adults, while processing orally presented sentences. Two experiments were conducted: (a) an…

This study of vocabulary comprehension strategies (VCS) is framed by the debate on L2-only instruction in the second or foreign language (L2) classroom where the teacher shares the first language (L1) of the students. Research has shown that some teachers switch to the L1 to explain lexical items while others try to explain them through L2…

Embodied theories of language comprehension propose that readers construct a mental simulation of described objects that contains perceptual characteristics of their real-world referents. The present study is the first to investigate directly whether implied object size is mentally simulated during sentence comprehension and to study the potential…

Investigating the impact of linguistic characteristics on visual word recognition in children, we studied whether differences in native (L1) and second language (L2) processing already emerge at the beginning of reading development. German elementary school students in grades 2 to 6 completed a battery of standardized tests and a lexical decision…

Recent research has shown that distinct event-related potential (ERP) signatures are associated with switching between languages compared to switching between dialects or registers (e.g., Khamis-Dakwar & Froud, 2007; Moreno, Federmeier & Kutas, 2002). The current investigation builds on these findings to examine whether contrastive and…

Proficiency in second language (L2) has traditionally been linked to grammatical competence. However, as opposed to common misconceptions about language learning, to be proficient in a second language does not only entail the ability to produce grammatically correct sentences, but it also entails the ability to use this language appropriately. The…