It is well-established that language skills are amongst the best predictors of educational success. Consistent with this, findings from a population-based longitudinal study of parents and children in the UK indicate that language development at the age of two years predicts children's performance on entering primary school. Moreover, children who…

This research aims to develop instruments to assess language development in under-3s and the adult interventions that support it. After an extensive literature search, observations were conducted in 17 groups of children spread over two day-care centres. In total 42 children were observed during a 30-minute slot and 25 adults during a half day.…

Our objectives were to document and examine socioeconomic gradients across a comprehensive set of child development measures in a population living in extreme poverty, and to interpret these gradients in light of findings from the neuroscience literature. We assessed a nationally representative sample of 3-6-year-old children (n = 1332) from 150…

This study compared variables related to reading ability in Grade 3 students learning English as a first language (L1) and second language (L2). The students learning English as an L2 came from diverse backgrounds, with different levels of bilingualism in Spanish and English or Portuguese and English before they entered school. Both within-group…

This paper demonstrates systematic cross-linguistic differences in the electrophysiological correlates of conflicts between form and meaning ("semantic reversal anomalies"). These engender P600 effects in English and Dutch (e.g. [Kolk et al., 2003] and [Kuperberg et al., 2003]), but a biphasic N400--late positivity pattern in German (Schlesewsky…

For many young children who are English language learners (ELLs), the transition from home to kindergarten can be challenging. Music teachers face the challenge of working with all individuals in a student population and often engage with children who represent home environments whose native language is not English. As ELL students adjust to the…

Objective: This study examined the relative risk of placement disruption for 3-10 year-old children placed in out-of-home care based on the biological relatedness of the placement caregiver and child disability status: no disability, a non-behavioral disability only, a behavioral disability only, or both a non-behavioral and behavioral disability.…

The purpose of this article is to examine how struggles over language ownership are played out in a minority language setting, focusing on the case of Irish in the Republic of Ireland. The article examines the more or less serious struggles that emerge between so-called native, or L1, and nonnative, or L2, speakers of Irish in a language learning…

The "Picture Exchange Communication System" (PECS) has emerged as the augmentative communication intervention of choice for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), with a supporting body of single-participant studies. This report describes a meta-analysis of 16 single-participant studies on PECS with percentage of nonoverlapping data…

Previous cross-language research has focused on L1 phonological processing and its relation to L2 reading. Less extensive is the research on the effect that L1 orthographic processing skill has on L2 reading and spelling. This study was designed to investigate how reading and spelling acquisition in English (L2) is influenced by phonological and…

The aim of this small-scale study was to evaluate whether music could support communication, language and literacy development within a pre-school setting. The research focused on a music specialist who provided a range of musical activities that engaged both parents and children over a 20-week period. Initial interviews with parents indicated…

Research Findings: This study investigated relations among preschool teachers' (n = 75) sense of community, classroom language and literacy instructional quality, and children's (n = 398) gains in vocabulary and print concept knowledge during an academic year. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) results indicated that teachers' language and…

Recent years have brought increasing attention to studies of language acquisition in a country where the language is spoken, as opposed to formal language study in classrooms. Research on language learners in immersion contexts is important, as the question of whether study abroad is valuable is still somewhat controversial among researchers…

This pilot study investigated the effectiveness of using a thematic intervention approach for children with language disorders. Twenty students receiving language therapy at a university speech and hearing clinic were selected as participants in this pilot study. This pilot project was entitled the REAL Project with the term REAL being an acronym…

This article is to report an action research conducted in two sections of a course called Second Language Acquisition and Development during the fall semester of 2011 and the spring semester of 2012. By focusing on a three-way blended learning (BL) environment--face-to-face (F2F), eLearning, and Second Life (SL, a virtual-world environment), this…