Young children are slow to master conventional intonation patterns in their "yes/no" questions, which may stem from imperfect understanding of the links between terminal pitch contours and pragmatic intentions. In Experiment 1, five to ten-year-old children and adults were required to judge utterances as questions or statements on the…

This is a grammar which provides a detailed linguistic description of the phonology, morphology, syntax, discourse, lexicon and cultural environment of the Mehek language and its speakers. Mehek is a language spoken in Papua New Guinea by approximately 6300 people. It belongs to the Sepik language family, Tama branch. The theoretical background…

Recent research has shown that little attention has been paid to teachers' views regarding giving oral corrective feedback (Sepehrinia & Mehdizadeh, 2016). To fill this gap, this empirical study investigates the beliefs of Taif University's teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) about their feedback practices and their perception of…

Learning to compose texts adequate for different purposes is crucial for becoming literate. We examined developmental changes in the rhetorical structure of written texts produced by Spanish children throughout the early years of elementary school in the light of descriptive writing purposes. Children had also performed tasks to test…

This study investigated the effects of temporal distribution of practice on the learning and retention of Mandarin tonal word production. Eighty native English-speaking adults with no prior knowledge of a tonal language participated in this study. They were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions varying in intersession interval (ISI)…

Employers provide their interpretation of the meaning of "communication skills" in this qualitative study of 22 managers. Employers understand written communication to be types of documents, a way to write, and a mode of communication. Oral communication skills mean a style of interacting, presenting, and conducting meetings. Visual…

Picturebook discussions are commonplace literacy events in contemporary classrooms. The different experiences, backgrounds and ways of being that individual students draw upon during talk around texts prompt a broad range of ways to make, negotiate and share meanings. In addition to developing students' literacy skills such as oral language,…

This study investigated the feasibility of a teacher implemented intervention to accelerate phonological awareness, letter, and vocabulary knowledge in 141 children (mean age 5 years, 4 months) who entered school with lower levels of oral language ability. The children attended schools in low socioeconomic communities where additional stress was…

Among focus-on-form studies, oral corrective feedback (CF) has probably received the greatest attention. The majority of studies in this area appear to support a positive role for oral CF in improving interlanguage development. However, theorists adopting a nativist view of second language acquisition continue to question its effectiveness. The…

Despite concerted efforts to improve the reading skills of English language learners (ELLs), it remains unclear if the interventions they have been receiving produce any positive results. Thus, the purpose of this meta-analysis was to examine how effective reading interventions are in improving ELLs' reading skills and what factors may influence…

Communicating their thinking in mathematics is challenging for young children. This research studied the change in six-year old students' oral and written solution explanations before and after six problem-based mathematics lessons that focused on developing conceptual understanding of adding or subtracting a 2-digit number and a multiple of ten.…

Although videos are now used pervasively in English as a Foreign Language settings, most existing literature centers on learners as knowledge receivers or passive video viewers (Lialikhova, 2014; Fisher & Frey, 2015; Bakar et al., 2019). Rarely do studies involving videos engaged learners as knowledge generators or active, self-directed…

This study addresses the process of oral academic socialization that learners of a second language and culture undergo to succeed in disciplinary graduate courses. The participants were students from Mainland China and Taiwan pursuing an International Master of Business Administration (IMBA) degree at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL).…

This paper reports beliefs and preferences of second-language (L2) students regarding effective writing feedback strategies, especially conferences for oral and written feedback. Guiding the study were these questions: (1) Do L2 university students prefer to receive direct or indirect teacher feedback on written-language problems? (2) Do the…

Purpose: We sought to evaluate the development of grammatical accuracy in English-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) over a 3-year span. Method: Ten children who received CIs before age 30 months participated in this study at 3, 4, and 5 years postimplantation. For the purpose of comparison, 10 children each at ages 3, 4, and 5 years…