This project investigated vocabulary learning from a sociocultural perspective--in particular, the way in which lexical knowledge was mediated in Spanish second language (L2) learners' and native speakers' (NSs') interactions. Nine students who were enrolled in an advanced conversation course completed an oral portfolio assignment consisting of…

The current study aimed at investigating how mobile seamless technology can be used to enhance the pragmatic competence of learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL). 34 overseas CSL learners participated in this study. They were randomly assigned into two groups: the classroom group, executing language tasks in fake contexts in a traditional…

This study reports the results of an action-based study conducted in an EFL class to examine whether digital video recordings would contribute to the enhancement of EFL learners' oral fluency skills. It also investigates the learners' perceptions of the use of digital video recordings in a speaking class. 10 Turkish EFL learners participated in…

This study examines the effects of form-focused instruction (FFI) on the acquisition of subject-verb inversion word order in declarative sentences in German. A group of U.S. college students who participated in a semester-long study abroad program in Germany and were comparable in terms of preprogram oral proficiency levels and accuracy scores in…

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a text-based (TB) English structured language development programme and a teacher-designed standards-based (SB) English instructional model. The sample of this study comprised of 500 Samoan children, in Kindergarten (K) and Grade 1 (G1), on the island of American Samoa attending eight…

Although not a new discussion in the Irish context, the value of oral language development has recently gained prominence again in Irish Post-Primary English classrooms. In this article we present how the recent introduction of Junior Cycle English, which now includes an Oral Communication Classroom Based Assessment () is renewing efforts to…

Theories of writing development posit several component skills as necessary to the writing process. This meta-analysis synthesizes the literature on the correlation between these proposed component skills and writing outcomes. Specifically, this study examines the bivariate relationship of handwriting fluency, spelling, reading, and oral language…

The nature of a specific spoken language as well as its orthography and the close relation between these two characteristics may influence phonemic awareness development (Durgunoglu & Öney, 1999). In this respect, oral language proficiency of bilingual and monolingual children appears to have an influence on enhancing their phonological…

Practitioners as well as language approach and language development scholars need to work together to create an environment in which research-based learning methods can be put into practice with developmentally appropriate content. Inadequate attention has been given to the crucial language skills that underpin children's language and literacy…

Educators aspire to use the most effective teaching materials possible. Their choices, ideally, should be informed by empirical evidence on how materials they use can affect students' outcomes or performance, particularly their post-instruction performance or application. The current research tested the extent to which voice (active vs. passive)…

This study explored deaf and hearing university students' metacognitive awareness with regard to comprehension difficulties during reading and classroom instruction. Utilising the Reading Awareness Inventory (Milholic, V. 1994. "An inventory to pique students' metacognitive awareness of reading strategies." "Journal of Reading"…

In two eye-tracking experiments we examined whether wider discourse information helps the recognition of reduced pronunciations (e.g., "puter") more than the recognition of canonical pronunciations of spoken words (e.g., "computer"). Dutch participants listened to sentences from a casual speech corpus containing canonical and reduced target words.…

Reading a word may involve the spoken language in two ways: in the conversion of letters to phonemes according to the conventions of the language's writing system and the assimilation of phonemes according to the language's constraints on speaking. If so, then words that require assimilation when uttered would require a change in the phonemes…

People with high-functioning Autism (HFA) can accurately identify social categories from speech, but they have more difficulty connecting linguistic variation in the speech signal to social stereotypes associated with those categories. In the current study, the perception and evaluation of talker age by young adults with HFA was examined. The…

In examining how English as a second language (ESL) learners process English formulaic expressions in a nonnative English context, this study aims to investigate the strategies that learners use and how first language (L1) culture and conceptual knowledge could influence the use of the strategies. This study is guided by the research question of…