It is well documented that early social skills and inattention are linked to the development of children's emergent vocabulary skills; however, the existing literature primarily focuses on White, non-Latinx and/or African American children. Few studies have examined the relationships between these domains with Latinx dual language learners (DLLs)…

Educators and researchers consider vocabulary development foundational in young children's language and literacy learning and for academic achievement; adult-child shared book reading is potentially a rich site for word learning and concept development. In this article, we report on how an immigrant father and his four year old daughter, English…

This study examined accuracy in production and grammaticality judgements of verb morphology by eighteen Chinese-speaking children learning English as a second language (L2) followed longitudinally from four to six years of exposure to English, and who began to learn English at age 4;2. Children's growth in accuracy with verb morphology reached a…

There is currently an explosion in the number and range of new devices coming onto the technology market that use digital sensor technology to track aspects of human behaviour. In this article, we present and exemplify a three-stage model for the application of digital sensor technology in applied linguistics that we have developed, namely,…

Interaction is a necessary condition for second language (L2) learning (Long, 1980, 1996). Research in computer-mediated communication has shown that interaction opportunities make learners pay attention to form in a variety of ways that promote L2 learning. This research has mostly investigated text-based rather than voice-based interaction. The…

This article discusses a study on how language use and language development can be promoted through engaging students in different participation roles in board games. Theoretically, the study is grounded in sociocultural perspectives of activity theory and the role of play as a form of human motivation. A group of Grade 4 primary students learning…

Some aural activities are described that can help language students with their listening comprehension. They include dictation, a "who am I?" exercise, sketch-drawing, chart completion, a comparison exercise, and a flow diagram. (LB)

The similarity between the antecedents of listening and the consequences of speaking have long led theorists to believe in their intimate and even natural relationship. A tendency to conflate the two processes is found in articles on speech communication, automatic speech recognition, foreign language learning, and child language. Once this…

Incidental vocabulary learning from context and 2 factors that might influence it, access to a dictionary and verbal ability, were examined among 112 second-year university students. Results indicate that subjects learned more words while reading for meaning, but high verbal ability students and those using a dictionary learn more. (71 references)…

The ways in which children learn a language--be it their mother tongue or their second language--can have a strong influence on their success in school. Researchers in linguistics and early child development have tried to determine the factors that can help and hinder language acquisition in young children, with some conflicting results. In this…

THE RELATIONSHIP OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT TO CULTURAL BARRIERS AND THE TEACHING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES IS DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLE. VARIOUS VIEWS OF THE MEANING OF CULTURE ARE MENTIONED IN ORDER TO SINGLE OUT ANTHROPOLOGICAL CULTURE AS A MAIN FOCAL POINT. INTERCULTURAL DIFFERENCES ARE SPELLED OUT WITH EXAMPLES OF LINGUISTIC BARRIERS, AND…

The Bilingual Reading Study employs several measures of oral language proficiency: (1) a standardized oral language proficiency test, the Language Assessment Scales (LAS); (2) teacher ratings on the Student Operational Language Assessment Scale (SOLA); (3) teacher ratings on the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) Oral Language…

A descriptive, developmental study of children's imitation of interrogative sentences was conducted among 16 preschool and 15 kindergarten children acquiring English as either a native or a second language. A program of language activities based on four American folk rhymes (three in the form of a rhythmic dialogue and the fourth an antiphonal…

With the appropriate software, it is possible to create a pedagogical environment where children can learn to read and write at their own pace; by using the software Fairy-Tale-World, children can print their drawings and texts and learn foreign words easily. (AEF)

The Foreign Language Understanding Engendered by Naturalistic Techniques (Fluent) project is an educational system for beginning foreign language learning. Arguments are made in support of Fluent's scientific and practical potential for a situation-based, two-medium conversational environment that refers to pedagogical and second-language…