The history of oral teacher preparation in America is both significant and diverse. There are numerous individuals and events that shifted and defined the professional practices of individuals who promote the listening and spoken language development of children with hearing loss. This article provides an overview of this rich history and offers a…

The developing views of the purposes of school learning (PSLs) and related achievement among immigrant Chinese preschoolers and their European American (EA) age-mates were examined. Both culture and socioeconomic status (SES) were considered simultaneously, an often neglected research approach to studying Asian children. One hundred and fifty…

Research Findings: This study compared the unique effects of training low-income mothers in dialogic reading versus elaborative reminiscing on children's oral language and emergent literacy. Thirty-three low-income parents of 4-year-old children attending Head Start were randomly assigned to either dialogic reading, elaborative reminiscing, or a…

The purpose of the current study is to elaborate on the statistical nature of the linguistic interdependence hypothesis (Cummins, 1979). It is argued that reading skills across the languages of bilingual learners are differentially robust to interdependence, falling along a continuum mediated by the commonalities between Spanish and English.…

For many decades now, applied linguistics studies have investigated the impact of second language acquisition on various aspects of the development of school children. Few studies, however, have focused on the simultaneous acquisition of two additional/second languages in the classroom. The present paper explores the impact of a spoken Arabic…

Effects of a 1-semester professional development (PD) intervention that included expert coaching with Head Start teachers were investigated in a randomized controlled trial with 88 teachers and 759 children. Differential effects of technologically mediated (remote) versus in-person (on-site) delivery of individualized coaching with teachers also…

A longitudinal, experimental-control design was used to test the hypothesis that native language instruction enhances English language learner's (ELL's) native language and literacy development without significant cost to English development. In this study, 31 Spanish-speaking preschoolers (aged 38-48 months) were randomly assigned to two Head…

Nowadays, English writing and speaking have received more and more attention at home and abroad. Both scholars and educators have done research on second language learning, especially the learning strategies to facilitate the learning and teaching of English. Among all the branches of English, speaking and writing rank to the most important…

Language access mandates in the USA, which require that governmental services be provided in any needed language, have been largely ignored since their first enacting. However, the past decade has seen an increase in the number of national, state, and local efforts to accommodate limited English-proficient individuals. This article provides an…

This article describes three big programs from Delaware where the less commonly taught languages find their home in Delaware elementary schools. Odyssey Charter School, located in Wilmington, is one of the very few Greek-language-focused public schools in the nation. The school began in 2006 as a Greek immersion program that concentrated on the…

This multiple case study examines language-focused instruction in 3 university Spanish literature classes to examine the students' and instructors' perspectives on language learning in this context. The classes were studied for a semester through observations, instructor interviews and stimulated recalls, and student questionnaires. Among the…

Difficulties with pragmatic aspects of communication are universal across individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Here we focused on an aspect of pragmatic language comprehension that is relevant to social interaction in daily life: the integration of speaker characteristics inferred from the voice with the content of a message. Using…

In 2002 the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) implemented a revised version of the Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE). CPE, which is the highest level of the Main Suite of Cambridge ESOL exams, comprises five modules, "Reading," "Writing," "Use of English," "Listening" and "Speaking," the latter of which is the…

The role of the first language (L1) in the learning of a second language (L2) has been widely studied as a source of cross-linguistic influence from the native system (Gass and Selinker, "Language Transfer in Language Learning," John Benjamins, 1992). Yet, this perspective provides no room for an understanding of language as a cognitive tool…

This study examines the production of topical talk in peer collaborative negotiation in an interactive assessment innovation context. The ability to stay on topic, to move from topic to topic and to introduce new topics appropriately is at the core of communicative competence. Applying conversation analysis (CA), we describe and analyze how one…