Preschool educators are linguistic models for their students. They prompt students to speak. Educators who are able to understand the critical nature of their role in the students' oracy development and to deliberately encourage conversation may have a profound impact on preschoolers who may be at risk. Oracy is self-expression prompted by…

The reading underachievement of African American (AA) school-age children has received considerable attention in educational circles. Unfortunately, there are relatively few studies designed to uncover the source or sources of these reading achievement differences, especially in children beyond early elementary grades. Some studies suggest that…

This paper explores the effects of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) instruction on the oral production of 15 high-school learners of English. The learners' use of the L1s (Basque and Spanish) in discourse markers and repair sequences as well as the learners' overall morphosyntactic development were analysed at two testing times (age…

The German sibilant /esh/ is produced with a constriction in the postalveolar region and often with protruded lips. By covarying horizontal lip and tongue position speakers can keep a similar acoustic output even if the articulation varies. This study investigates whether during two weeks of adaptation to an artificial palate speakers covary these…

During the past few years, the teachers and staff at Kendall Demonstration Elementary School (KDES) have reviewed research to identify factors that positively impact language development for deaf and hard of hearing children, and established language and communication practices to reflect what they have learned. Based on the research, which…

Is "two" ever a plural marker in child language? By some accounts, children bootstrap the distinction between the words "one" and "two" by observing their use with singular-plural marking ("one ball/two balls"). Others argue that the numeral "two" marks plurality before children begin using numerals to denote precise quantities. We tested the…

This study looks at the real and perceived effects of inter-candidate variation in linguistic ability during pair-tested oral examinations in a southern Italian context. Pair testing has not been taken up in schools and universities in southern Italy despite its wide use in international testing systems. Colleagues and prospective candidates often…

The present study aimed at identifying core components of reading instruction in Chinese within the framework of the tiered intervention model. A curriculum with four teaching components of cognitive-linguistic skills was implemented in a Program school for 3 years since Grade 1. The findings showed that the Tier 1 intervention was effective in…

The goal of the present intervention research was to test whether guided invented spelling would facilitate entry into reading for at-risk kindergarten children. The 56 participating children had poor phoneme awareness, and as such, were at risk of having difficulty acquiring reading skills. Children were randomly assigned to one of three training…

This study investigated correspondence between different measures of bilingual language proficiency contrasting self-report, proficiency interview, and picture naming skills. Fifty-two young (Experiment 1) and 20 aging (Experiment 2) Spanish-English bilinguals provided self-ratings of proficiency level, were interviewed for spoken proficiency, and…

This study investigated the syntactic ability of 82 struggling adult readers who recognize words between the third and fifth grade levels. Analysis of the adults' performance on the TOLD-I:3 indicated that they were deficient on the syntactic task. Correlations found the struggling adult readers' oral language skills, written language skills, and…

The study reported in this article aimed to investigate the way working memory capacity (WMC) interacts with careful online planning--a task-based implementation variable--to affect second language (L2) speech production. This issue is important to teachers, because it delves into one of the possible task-based implementation variables and thus…

Orthographic influences in spoken word recognition have been previously examined in alphabetic languages. However, it is unknown whether orthographic information affects spoken word recognition in Chinese, which has a clean dissociation between orthography (O) and phonology (P). The present study investigated orthographic effects using event…

This study examined whether there are bilingual advantages in terms of phonological awareness (PA) for children acquiring two phonologically and orthographically different alphabetic languages and investigated the emergent literacy factors that explain variances in their PA, in comparison to monolingual children. The study participants comprised…

"We wish we had that option in our area." "Wish we lived closer." "I wish I would have known." These statements, made by parents of children who are deaf and hard of hearing, illustrate a frustrating reality for many families--a lack of access to qualified professionals and specialized services to help children with…