Purpose: The present study examined the nature of the effects (direct or indirect) of vocabulary, phonological and morphological awareness on early reading skills in the consistent Greek orthography by testing a unifying model of early reading development in a sample of 141 first-grade children. Method: Vocabulary, phonological and morphological…

The present study investigated the effects of different types of form-focused instruction (FFI) on the acquisition of French grammatical gender attribution. A quasi-experimental study was conducted with 140 participants in six intact French as a second language (L2) classes. The classes received six 80-minute instructional sessions consisting of…

This article presents an adaptation of an arts-based research method usually reserved for child-focused research to examine organizational processes. We developed Draw, Write, Reflect (DWR), advancing a known method, Draw and Write, for investigating phenomena relating to child participants, to explore a new context: adults engaging in academic…

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of collaborative learning on learners' communicative strategies in English for specific purpose (ESP) tour guide training course. The 12-week study was conducted using a quasi-experimental design with a pre-test and post-test, following the instruction of twelve topics in the ESP language…

The purpose of this study was to improve the vocabulary of fourth-grade primary school students through action plans based on digital tools. The study was conducted within the framework of participatory action research design, one of the qualitative research approaches. The participants were 32 fourth-grade students from a public elementary school…

Teacher knowledge is a critical factor in student success. In the Classroom Promotion of Oral Language cluster randomized controlled trial, we aimed to determine whether a teacher professional learning intervention focused on promoting oral language led to improved teacher knowledge. We report a study of the impact of professional learning on…

This paper describes teachers' practices and their perceptions regarding the teaching and learning of oral language in Catalan schools. We used the Assessment Scale for Oral Language Teaching in School Settings (EVALOE) instrument, created and validated with the aim of assessing teachers' practices for promoting the development of language skills…

Children's oral language proficiency (OLP) is integral for developing literacy skills. Storytelling or retelling is often used by parents and educators to elicit children's OLP, yet it is less commonly used for assessment purposes. Leveraged by natural language processing and machine learning, this study examined the extent to which computational…

This dissertation examines heritage language learners of Spanish enrolled in university Spanish courses, focusing on their strategic use of suprasegmental speech features in two speaking tasks. The research investigates attitudes' influence on heritage language learners' speech production in different task types. Participants engaged in two…

Many bilingual preservice teachers in Texas are not able to get certified because of language limitations. Although they have grown up listening and speaking their native language at home, with family and friends, many face challenges when using academic language in a formal setting. There is a mismatch between their language level and their…

Numerous studies have investigated the effects of prewriting tasks on writing quality and language (e.g., individual vs. collaborative planning, text-chat vs. face-to-face [FTF] discussion, etc.). Recent meta-analyses have found a small advantage for text chat on writing, but no studies involved logographic languages, for which character learning…

In its descriptors for oral fluency the Common European Framework of Reference includes frequent references to the tempo of speech and the use of pausing. The present study aims to provide empirical evidence that these fluency phenomena exist; it also seeks to establish how they distinguish two different levels of proficiency (B2 and C1) among L2…

Courses: Introduction to Rhetoric and Communication, Basic Course, Public Speaking, Classical Rhetoric. Objectives: To re-establish disciplinary commitment to civic education in perilous democratic times through "imitatio."

International assessments show that 20% of adolescents cannot read simple texts with understanding. Despite this, research has focused on early reading in childhood and skilled reading in adulthood, neglecting reading development during adolescence. We report a longitudinal study assessing reading and vocabulary development at 12, 13 and 14 years…

While we know that interventions targeting oral language can be effective, little is known about what drives these effects. In this study, we examine whether gains in transfer measures are mediated through the specific words that are trained in a language intervention. Based on a large-scale randomized controlled trial of language intervention in…