A disproportionally high number of children with specific language impairment (SLI) develop dyslexia. Yet it is hard to predict which individual child is at risk. This article presents a longitudinal study of phonological and early literacy development of 18 Dutch-speaking children with SLI, compared to 18 typically developing controls over a…

Motivated by cognitive theories of graph comprehension, this study systematically manipulated characteristics of a line graph description task in a speaking test in ways to mitigate the influence of graph familiarity, a potential source of construct-irrelevant variance. It extends Xi (2005), which found that the differences in holistic scores on…

This dissertation research investigates the cognitive mechanisms underlying second language (L2) listening comprehension. I use three types of sentential contexts, congruent, neutral and incongruent, to look at how L2 learners construct meaning in spoken sentence comprehension. The three types of contexts differ in their context predictability.…

This paper presents the rationale and research base for a reading competency model designed to guide the development of cognitively based assessment of reading comprehension. The model was developed from a detailed review of the cognitive research on reading and learning and a review of state standards for language arts. A survey of the literature…

This study investigates the source of second language (L2) learners' low use of conventional expressions--one part of pragmalinguistic competence--by investigating the relationship between recognition and production of conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. Two tasks--an aural recognition task and an oral production task--were completed by 122…

Computer-based testing (CBT) to assess second language ability has undergone remarkable development since Garret (1991) described its purpose as "the computerized administration of conventional tests" in "The Modern Language Journal." For instance, CBT has made possible the delivery of more authentic tests than traditional paper-and-pencil tests.…

Spoken words undergo frequent and often predictable variation in pronunciation. One form of variation is medial /t/ deletion, in which words like "center" and "cantaloupe" are pronounced without acoustic cues indicative of syllable-initial /t/. Three experiments examined the consequences of this missing phonetic information on lexical activation.…

Many theoretical models of reading assume that different writing systems require different processing assumptions. For example, it is often claimed that print-to-sound mappings in Chinese are not represented or processed sub-lexically. We present a connectionist model that learns the print-to-sound mappings of Chinese characters using the same…

The purpose of this study was to extend the research on functional communication training by examining the use of a speech-generating device (SGD) for a 7-year-old child with autism and no spoken language who demonstrated inappropriate vocalizations that served multiple functions. An analog functional analysis was used to determine the function of…

Two studies investigated the effects of prosody and pragmatic context on off-line and on-line processing of sentences like "John greeted Paul yesterday and Ben today". Such sentences are ambiguous between the so-called "nongapping" reading, where "John greeted Ben", and the highly unpreferred "gapping" reading, where "Ben greeted Paul". In the…

Corpus-based grammars, notably "Cambridge Grammar of English," give explicit information on the forms and use of native-speaker grammar, including spoken grammar. Native-speaker norms as a necessary goal in language teaching are contested by supporters of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF); however, this article argues for the inclusion of selected…

"Curiosity Corner" is an early childhood curriculum emphasizing children's language and literacy skills. It comprises two sets of 38 weekly thematic units, one for three-year-olds and one for four-year-olds. Program staff conduct daily lessons using sequential daily activities. The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) reviewed three studies of…

The word length effect, the finding that lists of short words are better recalled than lists of long words, has been termed one of the benchmark findings that any theory of immediate memory must account for. Indeed, the effect led directly to the development of working memory and the phonological loop, and it is viewed as the best remaining…

This article reports on an innovative approach to teaching Calculus I which was initiated in a two-semester course designed for students at risk of failing Calculus I. The treatment consisted of voluntary oral assessments offered before every written examination. Analyses showed that the treatment students did significantly better than the control…

The purpose of this action research study was to investigate undergraduate preservice student-teachers' interpretations of written reflections and how these written reflections impacted their thoughts about teaching practices. A second question was to investigate how preservice teachers talked about their processes of reflection beyond the…