In the context of scholarly and scientific discourse, students often have to deal with graphic-visual modes of communication, which requires their ability to comprehend and utilize inscriptions, that is, scientific visual representations, to convey information effectively--what we call graphical literacy. Despite its pivotal role for training…

Accuracy is widely recognized as one of the main dimensions in evaluating task-based oral performance. Indicators of accuracy vary in the literature of the effects of pre-task planning on the oral production. Enlightened by previous studies in pre-task planning and third-person singular "-s," this article intends to find out whether the…

Emotions are a fleeting experience, sometimes lasting only moments before dissipating. Prior research in SLA has either ignored emotions, underestimated their relevance, or has studied them as a relatively stable individual difference variable. In contrast, the present study takes an idiodynamic approach to examine the rapidly changing…

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which performance on the TOEFL iBT speaking section is associated with other indicators of Japanese university students' abilities to communicate orally in an academic English environment and to determine which components of oral ability for these tasks are best assessed by TOEFL iBT. To…

Motivated by cognitive theories of graph comprehension, this study systematically manipulated characteristics of a line graph description task in a speaking test in ways to mitigate the influence of graph familiarity, a potential source of construct-irrelevant variance. It extends Xi (2005), which found that the differences in holistic scores on…

This mixed methods study combining a single-subject experimental design with an embedded case study focuses on the impact of a visual treatment on the handwritten and typed output of a struggling male writer during his 5th through 7th grades who has undergone a longitudinal remedial phase of two and a half years creating text-only material as well…

Describes the acquisition and use of a Chinese metalanguage with which ambiguous spoken words are graphically contextualized. The metalanguage is composed of strategies that range from the actual writing of the Chinese graph (character) to those where the graph is accommodated in a verbal presentation. (12 references) (JL)

The first step in documenting children's progress toward important goals, such as developing strong oral language and early literacy skills, requires measurable outcomes. Measurable outcomes contribute to teachers' understanding of whether the gains they observe in children are meaningful by adding quantitative evaluation of a child's progress…

Multifaceted Rasch analysis was used to determine whether bias was evident in the way a group of raters graded two different versions of an oral interaction test, undertaken by the same candidates. Results indicate that certain raters consistently rated the tape version of the test more harshly while others rated the live one more harshly. (10…

Describes the different effects for four types of activities on students' pronunciation of targeted second-language (L2) vocabulary used in oral presentations. Samples of pronunciation were elicited at three points. The observed effects over time are presented graphically, and the complex learning processes underlying these effects are discussed.…

Reports on a longitudinal study of the relationship between productive phonological ability and awareness in children under the age of six. The study followed 45 subjects with variant productive phonology levels from the mean age of 3 years, 6 months to 6 years, 0 months. As a child matures in productive phonology, accompanying exponential growth…

This paper reports the results of an experiment with 21 Italian children (age 2;8-5;11) and 29 U.S. children (age 2;7-5;9) who were tested on their knowledge of verb raising to C in main WH-questions, an obligatory movement process in adult Italian and English. Along the lines of recent movement and feature checking theories, it is proposed that,…

Toddlers in the lowest 10th percentile for lexical production were compared with age- and language-matched controls on measures of phonetic complexity, lexical development, and grammatical complexity. Results indicate an overlap between phonology, lexicon, and grammar and suggest the importance of true consonant production for lexical development.…

Studies native speakers of Korean to determine the role of universals in their acquisition of English obstruent voicing contrasts. Data were collected from a passage and a word list containing voiced and voiceless obstruents in initial, medial, and final word positions. Results reflected principles of markedness, universals of L1 acquisition, and…