This "Focus On" describes instructional strategies that are effective for students with disabilities and that have also been shown to be effective in raising the achievement outcomes of underachieving students without identified disabilities. The authors first describe the challenging characteristics of underachieving students and discuss some of…

It is well established that variation in caregivers' speech is associated with language outcomes, yet little is known about the learning principles that mediate these effects. This longitudinal study (n = 27) explores whether Spanish-learning children's early experiences with language predict efficiency in real-time comprehension and vocabulary…

Capacity limits in linguistic short-term memory (STM) are typically measured with forward span tasks in which participants are asked to recall lists of words in the order presented. Using such tasks, native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) exhibit smaller spans than native speakers ([Boutla, M., Supalla, T., Newport, E. L., & Bavelier, D.…

Childhood experience with a language seems to help adult learners speak it with a more native-like accent. Can analogous benefits be found beyond phonology? This study focused on adult learners of Spanish who had spoken Spanish as their native language before age 7 and only minimally, if at all, thereafter until they began to re-learn Spanish…

It has been a matter of debate whether the specifically human capacity to process syntactic information draws on attentional resources or is automatic. To address this issue, we recorded neurophysiological indicators of syntactic processing to spoken sentences while subjects were distracted to different degrees from language processing. Subjects…

Purpose: This article provides a tutorial for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) concerning approaches for improving the reading skills of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). SLPs are encouraged to modify their role to include a literacy focus, not only because of inclusion and standardized reading tests, but also because SLPs offer…

Fifty-six studies from 1980 to 2007 involving the use of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) by individuals with autism were reviewed. The majority of the studies used single-subject research designs and emphasized language production skills. Many investigations were held in artificial language learning settings, and a few involved…

The aim of training children with hearing impairment in the auditory oral approach is to develop good speaking abilities. However, children with profound hearing-impairment show a wide range of spoken language abilities, some having highly intelligible speech while others have unintelligible speech. This is due to errors in speech production.…

Prior eye-tracking studies of spoken sentence comprehension have found that the presence of two potential referents, e.g., two frogs, can guide listeners toward a Modifier interpretation of "Put the frog on the napkin..." despite strong lexical biases associated with "Put" that support a Goal interpretation of the temporary ambiguity (Tanenhaus,…

This paper tries to discuss how recitation input helps overcome the negative influences on the basis of second language acquisition theory and confirms the important role that recitation input plays in improving college students' oral and written English.

Female students have been discriminated against right from birth in their various cultures and this affects the way they perform in Spoken English class, and how they rate themselves. They have been conditioned to believe that the male gender is superior to the female gender, so they leave the male students to excel in spoken English, while they…

A significant number of students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) who attend partially or fully integrated classrooms in the United States in increasing numbers, show distinctive difficulties in reading comprehension and difficulty acquiring the foundational oral language skills necessary for reading development. In this paper we describe a…

For various reasons, second language learners modify their speech by means of self-repair. This study, based on a small-scale corpus, shows the patterns and features of self-repairs by intermediate Chinese learners of English. The results suggest that intermediate Chinese learners of English more frequently make repairs than advanced Chinese…

The investigator compared the linguistic characteristics of Spanish and English language samples taken from English language learners (ELLs) diagnosed with an academic learning disability (LD) and ELLs in general education to determine if the errors and characteristics of their language use differ. There was a statistically significant difference…

First-language (L1) and 2nd-language (L2) oral language skills and L2 word reading were used as predictors to test the simple view of reading as a model of 2nd-language reading comprehension. The simple view of reading states that reading comprehension is related to decoding and oral language comprehension skills. One hundred thirty-one…