Purpose: Syntax provides critical support for both academic success and linguistic growth, yet it has not been a focus of language research in school-age African American children. This study examines complex syntax performance of African American children in second through fifth grades. Method: The current study explores the syntactic…

This study investigates the extent to which (a) Spanish heritage (HL) and second language (L2) writers' linguistic complexity differs across register contexts and (b) Spanish proficiency and writing motivational beliefs differentially affect HL and L2 writers' performance. Participants were 58 HL and 54 L2 Spanish learners who completed two…

Among the Altaic languages, Turkic and Mongolian have a lot of similarities due to their prolonged contact and a common lineage. The two languages share several parallels in vocabulary, sound correspondence, phonotactic rules, and grammar. This study aimed to explore the comparative-historical aspects of Turkic-Mongolian language parallels in…

The rise of online programming education has necessitated more effective personalized interactions, a gap that PythonPal aims to fill through its innovative learning system integrated with a chatbot. This research delves into PythonPal's potential to enhance the online learning experience, especially in contexts with high student-to-teacher ratios…

This content analysis explored children's fictional storybooks and informational science books to determine their differences in high-quality text features that support oral language (OL) development. We also explored the opportunities for OL development in curricular books compared to trade books. Using systematic coding procedures, we evaluated…

This study examined word class effects on Yi students' L2 Chinese word associations. 108 stimulus words, consisting of 36 nouns, 36 verbs, and 36 adjectives, were chosen from Corpus of Modern Chinese, with their frequencies and concreteness being strictly controlled. 80 students from grade 4 and 85 students from grade 10 finished the word…

The purpose of this registered report study was to determine the effects of explicit text structure instruction on the expository text comprehension of students with language and learning disabilities (LLD) using a multiple baseline design across conditions (e.g., compare-contrast and cause-effect) and participants. Participants included four…

This study investigated the development of syntactic complexity in second language (L2) learner essays, focusing on how key syntactic features evolve as L2 learners practice writing through the use of an automated written corrective feedback (AWCF) tool. Using a corpus of essays written across three writing sessions, five indices of syntactic…

Purpose: To avoid misdiagnosis with developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilingual children, it is recommended to evaluate both languages. However, unlike their monolingual peers, bilingual children acquire their heritage language under adverse input conditions. Focusing on Levantine Arabic, the study evaluates the clinical utility of a…

The reported study highlights the importance of an L2 curriculum integrating authentic linguistic and cultural input to promote learners' linguistic, communicative, and cultural competencies. Through content analysis, the researchers evaluated the linguistic and cultural authenticity of the Grades K-6 "Mandarin Matrix Curriculum"…

Psychological research on pseudo-profound bullshit--randomly assembled buzz words plugged into a syntactic structure--has only recently begun. Most such research has focused on dispositional traits, such as thinking styles or political orientation. However, none has investigated contextual factors. In two studies, we introduce a new paradigm by…

All accounts of language acquisition agree that, by around age 4, children's knowledge of grammatical constructions is abstract, rather than tied solely to individual lexical items. The aim of the present research was to investigate, focusing on the passive, whether children's and adults' performance is additionally semantically constrained,…

Iconic words imitate their meanings. Previous work has demonstrated that iconic words are more common in infants' early speech, and in adults' child-directed speech (e.g., Perry et al., 2015; 2018). This is consistent with the proposal that iconicity provides a benefit to word learning. Here we explored iconicity in four diverse language…

Using the Visual World Paradigm, the current study aimed to explore whether the mass/count distinction is determined by syntax in Mandarin Chinese, focusing on classified nouns in nominal phrases. By using dual-role classifiers, ontological count and mass nouns, and phrase structures with and without biased syntactic cues we found that the…

To explore the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and language domain (vocabulary, syntax, process), the QUILS was administered to 212 kindergartners. Children from very-high poverty schools performed significantly below children from high poverty and mid-low poverty schools. SES impacts language-learning processes (i.e., fast…