When introducing new words in a second language (L2), presenting vocabulary with concurrent gestures might facilitate learners' recollection of new words. Previous research has suggested that this gestural advantage might hold only for gestures that overlap with the semantics of the words. Dual coding theory predicts that learners should learn…

From a systems-theoretical perspective, community music can be conceived of as a self-referential communication system with the capacity for self-observation and self-description. How do these self-descriptions relate to the economic and social-political agendas of recent decades? This paper argues that community music tends to adapt itself to…

Language is conventional because word meanings are shared among different people. The present study examined Chinese infants' understanding of the language convention that different people should generalize words in the same way. Thirteen-month-old Mandarin-speaking Chinese infants repeatedly viewed a speaker providing a novel label for a target…

This study investigated the impact of information density on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) listening comprehension, testing the hypothesis that listeners prioritize message understanding in information-rich discourse over grammar-focused analysis in rhetorical discourse. A quasi-experimental design was employed with 26 EFL college students,…

The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of a multi-component homograph processing intervention complemented by Executive Function (EF) skills on the performance of struggling readers. The researchers focused on measuring improvements in literacy, metalinguistic abilities, cognitive/EF skills acquired during the intervention, and…

This meta-analysis aims to investigate gamification's impact on improving tertiary-level second-language learners' lexical repertoire. Forty-seven peer-reviewed works were evaluated for this analysis. The analysis focused on determining the effectiveness of gamified learning environments in the context of improving vocabulary and learning and…

Background/purpose: With advancements in technology, particularly in Artificial Intelligence (AI), personalized and adaptive systems are increasingly being integrated into conventional educational environments. These technologies create opportunities to place learners at the center of the educational experience through personalized learning.…

This study examines effects of memory load on the processing of scalar implicature via a dual-task paradigm using reading span and self-paced reading. Results indicate that participants showed online sensitivity to underinformative sentences (e.g., "Some birds have wings and beaks") at the end of the sentence. This online sensitivity…

This paper seeks to outline and describe the features of Ewe causative verbs and how they encode causative events. It explores the sub-lexical analysis of verbs' meanings since they form the basis of the classification of causal relations that allow us to explore the different imports between (sub-)events and how these events are structured, and…

A big challenge in educational resources construction is the intelligent and personalized resource recommendation for learners. This paper proposes a semantic recommendation framework of educational resources based on semantic web and pedagogics. In this framework, a domain ontology is constructed to describe the knowledge structure of the domain.…

Purpose: Key word signing (KWS) entails using manual signs to support the natural speech of individuals with normal hearing and who have communication difficulties. While manual signs from the local sign language may be used for this purpose, some KWS systems have opted for a distinct KWS lexicon. Distinct KWS lexicon typically aims for higher…

Novel word learning and consolidation was studied in inexperienced language learners, to conceptually replicate and extend a similar study in experienced learners by Bakker, Takashima, Van Hell, Janzen, and McQueen (2015). Participants learned definitions for novel words on Day 1 and for another set of novel words on Day 2. Brain potentials…

This study explores the important communicative roles carried out by road signs both directly and indirectly. The qualitative analysis is based on a corpus of 150 road signs collected from signage on state and local highways and roadways in seven U.S. states. Road signs were identified as either full, grammatical sentences or as block language.…

This study compares the relative influence of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in university students' interpretation of multiply quantified statements in mathematics, both before and after instruction. Like previous studies, results show that semantics plays a heavy role in student interpretation, especially before instruction. Unlike previous…

Many recent studies have shown that memory for correct answers is enhanced when an error is committed and then corrected, as compared to when the correct answer is provided without intervening error commission. The fact that the kind of errors that produced such a benefit, in past research, were those that were semantically related to the correct…