Like verbs, adjectives pose a challenge to the young word learner in that some -- like "red," "round," "rough," or "rectangular" -- map onto properties that are detectable through the senses, while others -- like "ready," "reasonable," or "required" -- express abstract…

Writing is a complex activity requiring a wide range of skills. Sentence construction, a foundational writing skill, is necessary for paragraph and composition writing. Unfortunately, many current approaches to teaching writing place a priority on the product--focusing on teaching the process of writing lengthy pieces rather than providing…

Purpose: The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association requires speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to be aware of language disorders versus language differences. SLPs are likely to provide clinical services to Navajo and other Native American children with communication disorders. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to educate SLPs who…

The use of present and past participles and gerunds was summarized and illustrated from various examples cited or given, on the basis of the writer's teaching experience, and extensive review of different English grammar books, reference books, magazines, newspapers, books, English dictionaries, and online articles, in order for English language…

This article illustrates the potential of using children's play and interest in constructive materials like LEGO bricks to support early literacy, particularly in improving the use of descriptive language. The article describes an action plan using storytelling and constructive LEGO play to improve the children's use of descriptive language and…

"Little" words often carry complex meanings. Pronoun resolution is an essential component of comprehension. Skilled readers work to maintain text cohesion (i.e., they resolve the pronouns as needed.) Less proficient readers often are not as proficient in resolving pronouns. Limited pronoun resolution limits comprehension. This article…

Existential negation is the one type of negation present in languages, which its item is called "negative existential", and it provides to tell the case of "absence", "lack", "there is not", "poor", "empty", "dead" etc. Negative existentials are generally used for the common…

Information literacy is a critical 21st-century skill, yet young readers rarely have opportunities to consider where information comes from. In this Teaching Tip, the authors use author's notes in nonfiction storybooks to promote student awareness of authorship. The author's visibility in author's notes varies along a continuum from invisible…

Interface Delay is a theory of syntactic development, which attempts to explain an array of constructions that are slow to develop, which are characterized by being sensitive to discourse-pragmatic considerations of the type associated with the natural semantic class of definites. The theory claims that neither syntax itself, nor the…

Creating a welcoming community is key for an academic environment to thrive. This approach includes accurately representing community members' identities to understand their experiences, and establishing procedures for recording and utilizing individuals' names to support their ability to express their identities freely and without fear of…

The purpose of this article is to help ESL (English as a Second Language) students or English language learners (ELLs) how to express or use moods correctly when they study English. The expression of moods was summarized and illustrated from various examples cited or given, on the basis of the writer's more than twenty years' teaching experience…

Purpose: A variety of pediatric clinical populations have difficulty with the correct use of pronouns. The available clinical literature labels these errors in inconsistent terms leading to great variation in how treatment objectives are worded. The purpose of this tutorial is to encourage a shift in pronoun assessment and treatment planning…

How do children learn to communicate, and what do they learn? Traditionally, most theories have taken an associative, compositional approach to these questions, supposing children acquire an inventory of form-meaning associations, and procedures for composing / decomposing them; into / from messages in production and comprehension. This paper…

This practical article describes how three programs (two in high schools and one at a university) use photography, media, and television to engage students in the emotional work of developing gender-inclusive spaces. At the outset, the article briefly outlines how these classes use practices such as asking for pronouns, teaching nonbinary…

The University of Minnesota is a large public research university with five campuses that provide undergraduate, graduate, and professional education to 67,000 students. Given the university's diverse community, a dedicated campus climate effort helps ensure that the campus is welcoming of all persons. Because the student information system (SIS)…