Chinese immersion programs have been increasingly popular in US schools. However, we have insufficient data on young English-speaking children's acquisition of Chinese as a second language in these programs, and specifically on social contextual variables systematically promoting or hindering Chinese language use. Taking a variationist…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the experiences and challenges of Middle Eastern refugee mothers in using technology for language learning in regional Australian context. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a qualitative research design and used a narrative enquiry technique to understand…

Background: Early language delay is exacerbated by social disadvantage. Factors such as parents' low levels of literacy, confidence and self-perception can affect the capacity to act on advice received, critical to empowerment. Methods used to achieve successful health outcomes in socially disadvantaged clinical populations may need enhancing.…

English language (EL) students' English language proficiency (ELP) scores directly impact a school district's College and Career Ready Performance Index (CCRPI) score, measuring whether Georgia meets accountability requirements. English language proficiency for English language learners (ELLs) is measured by the ACCESS for ELLs assessment. The…

The dissertation presents a pioneering investigation into child speech among Bikolano children. It aims to address the underdescription and underdocumentation of Child Bikol as spoken in the Philippines. Bikol, an Austronesian macrolanguage, often coexists with more dominant languages, making Bikolano children both emergent multilinguals and…

This paper presents the outcomes of an action research study that implemented a linguistic landscape (LL) unit as an English language learning activity at the secondary school level in Rayong, Thailand. The theoretical framework employed in this study draws upon Lefebvre's (1991) conceptualization of space, adapted for pedagogical purposes as…

Using data from a longitudinal German large-scale study and structural equation modeling, this study investigated the effects of different dimensions of the early home learning environment (HLE) as well as the effect of language-related preschool quality at the age of 3 to 5 years on students' later school-relevant language proficiency (as…

Studies of non-linguistic statistical learning (SL) have often linked performance in SL tasks with differences in language outcomes. Most of these studies have focused on Western and high-income educational contexts, but children worldwide learn in radically different educational systems and communities, and often in a second language. In the west…

We investigate German-Russian bilingual children's sensitivity to formal and semantic cues when assigning gender to nouns in German. Across languages, young children have been shown to primarily rely on phonological cues, whereas sensitivity to semantic and syntactic cues increases with age. With its semi-transparent gender assignment system,…

Learning a foreign language enables people to get to know different cultures. People who know different cultures get richer. So, their prejudices against people are destroyed. Thus, a foreign language student may both improve himself and become a better person. In this context, the aim of the present study is to learn the thoughts of Turkish…

Children's vocabulary ability at school entry is highly variable and predictive of later language and literacy outcomes. Sleep is potentially useful in understanding and explaining that variability, with sleep patterns being predictive of global trajectories of language acquisition. Here, we looked to replicate and extend these findings. Data from…

Multisyllabic words constitute a large portion of children's vocabulary. However, the relationship between phonological neighborhood density and English multisyllabic word learning is poorly understood. We examine this link in three, four and six year old children using a corpus-based approach. While we were able to replicate the well-accepted…

Research on the second language (L2) acquisition of the Spanish copulas has been central to our understanding of key concepts and issues in the field of SLA such as stages of development and variability in L2s. However, this research has focused nearly exclusively on native English-speaking learners. The present study examined native…

Previous studies have found correlations between parent input and child language outcomes, providing prima facie evidence for a causal relation. However, this could also reflect the effects of shared genes. The present study removed this genetic confound by measuring English vocabulary growth in 29 preschool-aged children (21 girls) aged…

This study aimed at investigating the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic period on the language development of preschool children according to the opinions of teachers. A qualitative case study design was adopted, with data obtained from preschool teachers (N=21) working in independent kindergartens, kindergartens within primary schools, and private…