This study investigated the negotiations and challenges experienced by five Chinese ESL (English as a second language) students of Commerce through their engagement in an academic presentation in a regular content course at a Canadian university. Multiple sources of data were collected, including interviews, class observations, group discussions,…

Non-native speakers of English often experience problems in pronunciation as they are learning English, many such problems persisting even when the speaker has achieved a high degree of fluency. Research has shown that for a non-native speaker to sound most natural and intelligible in his or her second language, the speaker must acquire proper…

This comprehensive volume provides important and timely information about how best to teach literacy to ELLs. Contributors have come together to share their ideas on important topics such as increasing engagement and motivation, improving content area instruction, addressing writing instruction, strengthening home-school connections, and providing…

The authors examined the development of oral language and decoding skills from preschool to early elementary school and their relation to beginning reading comprehension using a cross-sequential design. Four- and 6-year-old children were tested on oral language and decoding skills and were retested 2 years later. In all age groups, oral language…

Functional imaging studies of single word production have consistently reported activation of the lateral prefrontal and cingulate cortex. Its contribution has been shown to be sensitive to task demands, which can be manipulated by the degree of response specification. Compared with classical verbal fluency, free word association relies less on…

The purpose of this study was to explore the connections between young children's oral language vocabulary and children's reading of written language in beginning reading books. Oral language has been viewed as the foundation for emergent reading development as it provides the semantic base, syntactic base and phonological base for successfully…

Previous studies have shown that second language (L2) learners use language to reflect on language form when they carry out collaborative classroom-based activities, and that they generally remember the language forms that they had discussed. The current study similarly investigated whether learners reflect on and remember language forms, but…

Davison and Leung (this issue) describe the field of teacher-based English language assessment as having "much variability, a lack of systematic principles and procedures and a dearth of information as to the impact of teacher-based assessments on learning and teaching" (p. 389). In this article, the author briefly explores an example of…

A spoken language eye-tracking methodology was used to evaluate the effects of sentence context and proficiency on parallel language activation during spoken language comprehension. Nonnative speakers with varying proficiency levels viewed visual displays while listening to French sentences (e.g., "Marie va decrire la poule" [Marie will…

A classifier which is capable of distinguishing a syntactically well formed sentence from a syntactically ill formed one has the potential to be useful in an L2 language-learning context. In this article, we describe a classifier which classifies English sentences as either well formed or ill formed using information gleaned from three different…

This study examined the writing performance of 58 students with a history of specific language impairment, assessing them at ages 8, 11, 12, 14, and 16 to evaluate longitudinal trajectories of writing performance and relationships with oral language, reading, and handwriting fluency. At age 16, participants continued to experience problems with…

In theories of spoken language production, the gestural code prescribing the movements of the speech organs is usually viewed as a linear string of holistic, encapsulated, hard-wired, phonetic plans, e.g., of the size of phonemes or syllables. Interactions between phonetic units on the surface of overt speech are commonly attributed to either the…

There has been increased attention to the development of measures for assessing mathematical skill and knowledge in young children. Most of the evidence supporting these measures is consistent with Stage 1 research in the development of progress monitoring measures (Fuchs, 2004) and consists of investigation of technical features of performance at…

Deaf users might find it difficult to navigate through websites with textual content which, for many of them, constitutes the written representation of a non-native oral language. With the aim of testing how the information structure could compensate for this difficulty, 27 prelingual deaf users of sign language were asked to search a set of…

This descriptive study investigated the levels of oral proficiency of candidates for initial PreK-12 teacher licensure in Spanish and French as reported by faculty and students in the teacher education programs at Ohio colleges and universities. The study was motivated by the adoption of the NCATE/ACTFL "Program standards for the preparation…