Purpose: To describe factors affecting early intervention (EI) for children who are hard of hearing, we analyzed (a) service setting(s) and the relationship of setting to families' frequency of participation, and (b) provider preparation, caseload composition, and experience in relation to comfort with skills that support spoken language for…

Purpose: Our aim is to explore the complex interplay of prosody (tone of speech) and semantics (verbal content) in the perception of discrete emotions in speech. Method: We implement a novel tool, the Test for Rating of Emotions in Speech. Eighty native English speakers were presented with spoken sentences made of different combinations of 5…

The goal of this study is to provide a better understanding of the influence from first language (L1) phonology and morphosyntax on second language (L2) production and perception of English regular past tense morphology. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.) [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC.…

This article explores the language of bimodal bilinguals (i.e., hearing children of Deaf parents who are exposed to sign language at home and to spoken language in the surrounding community). In similar bilingual contexts involving pairs of spoken languages, the language used at home, which differs from that of the community, is referred to as the…

Corrective feedback (CF) and task complexity are two important pedagogical topics in second language acquisition research in recent years, but there is few research investigating effects of CF on speaking task complexity in China's university classroom settings. This research, through conducting different versions of speaking task experiments…

Background: Language outcomes for children with cochlear implants (CIs) vary widely, even for those implanted before 2 years of age. Identifying the main influencing factors that account for some of the variability is important in order to provide information to guide appropriate clinical and intervention services for young children with CIs.…

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…

Background: Aphasia is characterized by difficulties in connected speech/writing. Aims: To explore the differences between the oral and written description of a picture in individuals with chronic aphasia (IWA) and healthy controls. Descriptions were controlled for productivity, efficiency, grammatical organization, substitution behaviour and…

The study investigated the "hundred languages of Deaf children" (Malaguzzi, 1993) in two schools using the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education, which originated in Italy. One principle of this approach, "the hundred languages of children," supports young children in expressing their ideas and thoughts in…

The ability to use written language to communicate receptively (i.e., reading) and expressively (i.e., writing) is important in school, work, and independent living. Students who struggle early with reading have difficulty catching up with their peers as they move through school and in academic areas that rely on reading proficiency. Individuals…

Previous research has revealed that teacher feedback encourages students' learning of a second language and improves task performance. While former quasi-experimental studies emphasized the positive effects of formative assessment and feedback by teachers on developing oral presentation competence, it remains unclear about the processes during…

Thesis defence examination (TDE) is an important event for students to complete to pursue their degree in many countries. Following Swales (1990, 2004) TDE can be considered as a class of communicative events, which has its own genre that has elements (or parts). Understanding the genre of an event could help students to perform competently. One…

The auditory system helps regulate phonation. A speaker's perception of their own voice is likely to be of both emotional and functional significance. Although many investigations have observed deviating voice qualities in individuals who are prelingually deaf or profoundly hearing impaired, less is known regarding how older adults with acquired…

English language teaching (ELT) textbooks, especially reading textbooks, often include biographical reading passages (Tomas, Kostka, and Mott-Smith 2013) with accompanying pre-reading questions, post-reading comprehension questions, vocabulary exercises, and prompts for writing or discussion. Teachers often begin reading lessons by providing…

Despite widespread agreement among ELT researchers that vocabulary lies at the heart of communicative competence, currently no consensus exists as to how learning of previously presented lexical items can be guaranteed. Given the inconclusiveness of findings, the present study attempted to delve into the differences in the learning of target…