This paper attempts to establish that there is a correlation between the sociolinguistic identities of high school students and their productive English-speaking abilities. The paper initially explains the basic concept of sociolinguistic identity and refers to various aspects of research into Japanese national identity to analyse how these may…

New technologies are changing the way of learning foreign languages. However, one of the main challenges for software developers and mobile assisted language learning designers remains the creation of learning environments for students' language immersion in and outside the classroom. This paper describes the design and evaluation of a VR-based…

The teaching and learning of a foreign language is a complex process; since there has been a change in the pedagogy of the foreign language from a specific foreign language method to the measurement of linguistic performance and competence. In all areas of learning, motivation is essential to succeed. The aim of this study is to analyze the…

To date, little is known about the high-level language skills and cognitive processes underlying reading comprehension in children. The present study aimed to investigate whether children with high, compared with low, reading comprehension differ in their sequencing skill, which was defined as the ability to identify and recall the temporal order…

Due to its influential nature on foreign language learning process, foreign language anxiety has been the focus of numerous studies in the literature of second language acquisition. In addition to its validation as a separate construct in late 80s, the last two decades have also witnessed the confirmation of skill-based anxieties as independent…

We investigated teacher effects (magnitude, predictors, and cumulativeness) on primary students' achievement trajectories in Chile, using multilevel cross-classified (accelerated) growth models (four overlapping cohorts, spanning Grades 3 to 8; n = 19,704 students, and 851 language and 812 mathematics teachers, in 156 schools). It was found that…

Production studies show connective acquisition by age 3;0, but comprehension studies show errors until 9;0 or older. To further investigate this gap, two comprehension tasks were carried out with 78 Dutch children between the ages of 7;0 and 10;1, testing contrastive "maar" 'but' and causal "want" 'because' connectives for…

This paper tries to answer whether Iraqi EFL college students are able to reset the parametric values of their native Arabic into those which suit English. It aims at enhancing Iraqi students' knowledge of some of the parametric values of English via tackling three parameters: "Null-subject parameter," "Head-parameter," and…

Background: The inaccurate estimation of language difficulties by teachers suggests the benefit of a short-language measure that could be used to support their decisions about who requires referral to a speech-language therapist. While the literature indicates the potential for the development of a short-language measure, evidence is lacking about…

This paper provides new evidence on the effect of computerized individualized practice and instruction on language skills, more specifically on spelling. An individually randomized experiment among 7th grade students in the Netherlands is developed to study the effect of an adaptive digital homework tool on spelling performance. Using an…

Few interventions exist for school-aged minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Even though play skills are associated with children's production of language, few studies have focused on play for minimally verbal children. Fifty-eight minimally verbal children with ASD received a naturalistic developmental behavioral…

Background: Traditional measures of school readiness are labour-intensive and do not assess family support. Aims: The current study used the newly developed Brief Early Skills and Support Index (BESSI: Hughes, Daly, Foley, White and Devine 2015) to examine 6-month longitudinal stability and change in teachers' ratings of young children's school…

Forty-two adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) ages 10 to 21 years completed a battery of language and phonological memory measures twice, 2 years apart. Individual differences were highly stable across two years. Receptive vocabulary scores improved, there was no change in receptive or expressive grammar scores, and nonword repetition scores…

In preparation for the academic rigor of higher-education institutions and the high standards of international businesses across the English-speaking globe, students must learn "to use language in more sophisticated ways: arguing, evaluating evidence, analyzing complex texts, and engaging in academic discussions." In order to give…

Educators have reported that incorporating the arts into the classroom can support foreign language (FL) learning. However, there is very little empirical evidence from the classroom to support this claim. This exploratory, quasi-experimental arts intervention study was conducted with native English speakers aged 12-13 years old as part of their…