Purpose: Most studies about reading development in second-language learners have been carried out on children exposed to the second language from kindergarten. They have shown that decoding skills develop in a similar way to those of monolingual children. We wondered whether this holds for primary school newcomer non-native-speaking children. This…

Background/purpose: The research aimed to develop listening and speaking skills in English as a foreign language among elementary school students by designing a smart voice assistant application based on artificial intelligence technology. Materials/methods: The research used the experimental methodology and was applied to a sample of two groups.…

Foreign language was recently added to Japan's national primary school curriculum. Phoneme-Grapheme Recognition (PGR) skills are a critical step in both L1 and L2 development. Due to its simplistic approach and the lack of new investment in teacher training, research regarding the impact on PGR skills are important. This study tested the relative…

Approximately 30% of students in Australian schools are from language backgrounds other than English (LBOTE). Some LBOTE students speak English as their first language and do not require English language support, while others (about 25% of the student population) are learning English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D). These students…

This research summary describes an Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) research project that explored how long it takes Australian students learning English as an additional language (EAL) to develop the English language skills necessary to participate equitably in curriculum learning. It outlines the key findings, context and…

The following are additional results from the research described in the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO)'s main project report, "How Long it Takes to Learn English While Learning the Curriculum." Specifically, these results supplement the results from Part 2 of the project, which used the NSW DoE's EAL/D Annual Survey…

Foundational literacy is a key lever for achieving higher levels of learning and societal wellbeing. However, with an enrolment of over 250 million children in schools, India is currently challenged by learning deprivation. Growing uptake of English-medium education along with less-than-optimal English literacy instruction practices present an…

Purpose: We evaluated the efficacy of a reading comprehension intervention with dual language learners (DLLs) with documented English reading comprehension difficulties, half of whom had a developmental language disorder. The intervention EMBRACE (Enhanced Moved by Reading to Accelerate Comprehension in English) required children to move images on…

People constantly practice the act of thinking. They may not think about everything, yet they certainly think of something and make decisions. Critical thinking is a sort of reflective thinking. It is controlled and aimed at perfect thinking. It enables the self-realization of individuals in social life. Therefore, it is important to develop…

English and Turkish languages have different orthographies. The orthography of English is considered relatively deep since many English letters can correspond to more than one sound; many sounds can be represented by more than one letter and English has a number of consonant digraphs/clusters such as th, sh, ch, and ck to represent a single sound.…

This paper presents a study conducted in a Greek Elementary school and explores the impact of Digital Storytelling (DST) on developing children's second language (L2) writing skills and their intercultural awareness. The development of digital technologies has enabled the use of different multimedia tools to reconfigure traditional storytelling.…

In this article, the author describes how to use "story retelling wheels" as scaffolding devices to support young learners as they develop the important skill of being able to retell stories that they have heard and comprehended. This tool can be adapted to meet young learners at different English language and literacy levels. It…

Recently, the emergence and rapid growth of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) have become an essential part of everyone's life. People from all walks of life are utilizing social media for communication, especially the primary and secondary school pupils. Instead of restricting the usage of ICT among primary school pupils, ICT should…

Literacy in a first language or in additional languages involves a set of complex cognitive, social, and linguistic skills that develop over time. However, pedagogical materials for low-proficiency English as an additional language (EAL) learners tend to target low-level literacy skills only, such as responding to fact-based questions. Materials…

Since young learners have different characteristics than adults, EFL teachers for young learners should treat them differently and possess sufficient metacognitive to promote critical thinking skills. This paper aims to portray teacher's metacognitive knowledge in EFL young learners' classroom particularly in promoting their critical thinking…