Arabic orthography is mainly presented either in shallow orthography (with all diacritics) for novice students or in deep orthography (without diacritics) for superior readers. However, the shallow orthography is heavily loaded with diacritics which may burden the reading process, whereas deep orthography can cause ambiguity (heterophonic…

Mobile technologies are increasingly finding their way into classroom practice. While these technologies can create opportunities that may facilitate learning, including the learning of a second or foreign language (L2), the full potential of these new media often remains underexploited. A case in point concerns tablet applications for language…

Words associated with perceptually salient, highly imageable concepts are learned earlier in life, more accurately recalled, and more rapidly named than abstract words (R. W. Brown, 1976; Walker & Hulme, 1999). Theories accounting for this concreteness effect have focused exclusively on semantic properties of word referents. A novel possibility is…

Support for this research provided through a Senior Lectureship in English and Linguistics from the Fulbright Commission in Japan. (VM)

Proposes feature analysis, which actively involves students in the learning process, capitalizes on their experiential backgrounds, and uses context as a means of teaching sensitivity to word connotations. (FL)

A study compared the instructional strategies of semantic mapping and semantic feature analysis with a traditional contextual approach for vocabulary acquisition. Subjects, 36 fourth, fifth, and six grade classes, were taught a set of 15 target words in each of the three instructional conditions for each of 3 weeks. Classes were assessed at the…

Foreign language instruction, particularly the learning of new vocabulary, could greatly benefit from the structural description of semantic fields. Examples are provided. (Text is in German.) (DS)

Using the counting features in previous mean length of utterance (MLU) studies, a study of the active vocabularies of adolescents looked at seven concrete features of the words 104 seventh grade and 100 eleventh grade subjects gave in response to 10 pictures. Each subject wrote five words for each of the pictures, which were analyzed for number of…

A foreign language teacher has always been influenced by his conception of what language is; e.g., if he thinks language is mostly words, he concentrates on teaching words and measures success by the size of his pupils' vocabulary. The study of pronunciation gave rise to several developments within linguistics, which has up to the present time…

This paper discusses various theories of the role of memory in vocabulary acquisition and storage. Several research models are described, and theoretical considerations and questions are presented. The lexicon is seen as an element of grammar; an understanding of lexicon organization is important in the understanding of vocabulary acquisition.…

A study investigated whether semantic feature analysis (SFA) significantly improves the content related vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension of adolescent, learning disabled readers. SFA is a set of vocabulary development activities designed to help students categorize vocabulary words and compare related ideas. Subjects, 62 learning…

Research was conducted to study systematically the comprehension and production of the pronouns "he, she, him, her" in the language of normal and linguistically deviant children. The purposes of the study were to: observe the manner in which normal children comprehend and produce these four pronouns, in terms of both their use and their…

Several studies have begun to investigate the claim that children can make most phonological discriminations when they begin to speak. This paper investigates how well children aged 2;3 to 2;11 can discriminate between pairs of minimally different real words, and it shows that the results are affected by how well the children know the words. It is…