The language effects on repair strategies employed by 7 bilingual deaf children (native signers who also used spoken language) was examined. During two sessions--one conducted in sign language and the other in spoken language--each child described a picture. The examiner stopped the child twice to request clarification. The children's responses to…

The aim of the present study was to advance the knowledge of the linguistic development of students with prelingual profound deafness, especially the acquisition and use of prepositions in Spanish, a lexical category with an important role in verbal comprehension. The researchers sought to learn the level of mastery students with prelingual…

Asymmetry in classroom discourse, typified by teachers' frequent use of inauthentic initiating question turns, does not afford the best opportunities for the learning of language skills. More favourable conditions would appear to be associated with collaborative discourse patterns that display genuine interest in the child's contribution and build…

Reynolds and Nicolson ("Dyslexia," 2007; 13: 78-96) claim to show that the "dyslexia dyspraxia attention-deficit treatment" (DDAT) benefits children with reading difficulties. However, Rack, Snowling, Hulme, and Gibbs ("Dyslexia," 2007; 13: 97-104) argue that because this study did not include an untrained control group then "all that needs to be…

This paper focuses on the aspects of the lexicon in 66 prematurely born very-low-birth-weight and 87 full-term Finnish children at 2;0, studied using the Finnish version of the "MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventory". The groups did not differ in vocabulary size. Furthermore, the female advantage in vocabulary size was not seen…

In immersion programs, language is not directly taught, but rather embedded into the content of a lesson. The target language is the medium of the lesson, not the object of the instruction. A story provides a language experience and encourages students to participate actively in the lesson. Children are also more apt to learn and retain ideas and…

The possibility of teaching communication strategies and the feasibility of incorporating them into school syllabi have been a controversial issue. In the current study, 60 Iranian students were divided into two thirty-member classes; then two different textbooks, one with specific CS and the other without them, were chosen to be taught in the…

Previous research implies that stereotypic behavior tends to be maintained by the sensory consequences produced by engaging in the response. Few investigations, however, have focused on vocal stereotypy. The current study examined the noncommunicative vocalizations of 4 children with an autism spectrum disorder. First, functional analyses were…

Lexical bundles--recurrent sequences of words--are important building blocks of discourse in spoken and written registers. Previous research has shown that lexical bundles are especially prevalent in university classroom teaching, where they serve three major discourse functions: stance expressions, discourse organizers, and referential…

Background: Narrative may provide a useful way in which to assess the language ability of adolescents with specific language impairment and may be more ecologically valid than standardized tests. However, the language of this age group is seldom studied and, furthermore, the effect of narrative genre has not been explored in detail. Methods &…

Self-repetition is commonly found in spoken discourse, and it could be argued that it is an interactional necessity. Self-repetition in spontaneous talk is pervasive and performs a variety of functions. Some regard it as signalling redundancy, disfluency, or both, in spoken language, whereas others consider it to be facilitating the production of…

Researchers and educators have developed an interest in language development. Their studies focused on the cultural context in which language is learned and developed and its relationship to cognitive development. This article reviews the researchers' definitions on oracy and its social facets of language learning. Specifically, it reviews studies…

Despite the need to use and develop their English-language proficiency, English-language learners (ELLs) are often quiet during classroom discussions. The Response Protocol was developed to help teachers elicit and support the oral interactions of ELL students. The Response Protocol is a framework consisting of six types of responses that students…

In an example of the redundancy effect, learning is inhibited when written and spoken text containing the same information is presented simultaneously rather than in written or spoken form alone. The current research was designed to investigate whether the redundancy effect applied to reading comprehension in English as a foreign language (EFL) by…

In this work, prominent authorities review the latest research on all aspects of ELL instruction (K-12) and identify what works for today's students and schools. Provided are best-practice guidelines for targeting reading, writing, oral language, vocabulary, content-domain literacies, and other core skill areas; assessing culturally and…