The oral re-telling of traditional tales, modelled by a storyteller and taught to children in school, can be understood as 'non-instrumental' practice in speaking and listening that emphasises oral language over the reading and writing of stories. While oral storytelling has significant benefits to children's education and development, it is…

Background: The effect of assisted reproduction technology (ART) on language development is still unclear. Moreover, different techniques are introduced at rapid pace and are not always accompanied by extensive follow-up programmes. Aims: To investigate the language development of 3-10-year-old children born following ART using intracytoplasmic…

In this paper, I create philosophical space for the importance of how we say things as an adjunct to attending to what is said, drawing on Stanley Cavell's discussions of moral perfectionism and passionate utterance. In the light of this, I assess claims made for the contribution drama makes to moral education. In "Cities of Words,"…

Studies of phonological development that combine speech-processing experiments with observation and analysis of production remain rare, although production experience is necessarily relevant to developmental advance. Here we focus on three proposals regarding the relationship of production to word learning: (1) "Articulatory filter": The…

This document is the second in a series of working papers that elaborate on a framework of four key stages in moving toward a common definition of English learner (EL), as described in the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) publication, "Toward a 'Common Definition of English Learner': Guidance for States and State Assessment…

This study describes the reliability and validity of four language tests: The Sentence Comprehension Test (SCT), the Expressive Language Test (ELT), the Sentence Repetition Test (SRT), and the Arabic Picture Vocabulary Test (APVT). These tests were administered to two groups of Qatari Arabic-speaking children: A typically developing group (n=81 to…

In this article, we report on a study that examined the active and receptive English vocabulary of two different groups of Grade 3 learners in South African township schools. The groups consisted of English Home Language (HL) learners in the Western Cape and Xhosa HL and English First Additional Language (FAL) learners in the Eastern Cape. The…

This study examined the effects of task types on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. To this end, 130 (70 female and 60 male) EFL learners were randomly assigned to one of six tasks of learning 30 target words. The design of the tasks was based on the involvement load hypothesis (ILH)…

Nine low-functioning children with profound expressive language impairment and autism were studied in terms of their responsiveness to a computer-based learning program designed to assess syntactic awareness. The children learned to touch words on a screen in the correct sequence in order to see a corresponding animation, such as "monkey…

In many low- and middle-income countries, young children learn a mother tongue or indigenous language at home before entering the formal education system where they will need to understand and speak a country's official language(s). Thus, assessments of children before school age, conducted in a nation's official language, may not fully reflect a…

Purpose: To date, there is no tool for assessing early pragmatic development of Polish-speaking children. This study aimed to adapt to Polish a standardized parent report measure, the Language Use Inventory (LUI; O'Neill, 2009, in order to enable cross-cultural comparisons and to use the LUI-Polish to screen for pragmatic development in children…

Though a number of language socialization processes are theorized to promote children's heritage language proficiency (HLP), little research has considered these processes in a single study and examined their prospective relations to multiple domains of HLP in school-age children. In a two-wave longitudinal study of Chinese American children of…

Introduction: Children and young adults with Down syndrome can demonstrate increased behavior problems compared to their typically developing peers through childhood and adolescence. Though current tools measure behavior problems in persons with intellectual disabilities, they do not capture all the behavioral problems that can occur in…

The advent of motion-controlled technologies has unlocked new possibilities for body-based learning in the mathematics classroom. For example, mixed-reality learning environments allow students the opportunity to embody a mathematical concept while simultaneously being provided a visual interface that represents their movement. In the current…

This study examines the English vocabulary development of 43 very young child English as a foreign language (FL) learners (age 3.2-6.2) in China. They were tested twice for vocabulary breadth (reception and production) and semantic depth (paradigmatic and syntagmatic vocabulary knowledge). The development of the English vocabulary knowledge…