Effective communication is essential for young children's academic and social competence. During the preschool years, children acquire the language and communication skills necessary to express their needs, thoughts, and feelings in social interactions, and they learn to respond appropriately to others. Through effective communication, they also…

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of cultural knowledge on improving Iranian EFL learners' listening comprehension. To achieve this purpose, out of 300 participants, 120 pre-intermediate language learners were selected based on their scores on a listening comprehension test and were randomly assigned to four groups. Each…

Research in the areas of second language (L2) pragmatics and of conversational humor has increased in recent decades, resulting in a strong base of knowledge from which applied linguists can draw information for teaching purposes and undertake future research. Yet, whereas empirical findings in L2 pragmatics are beginning to find their way into…

This study investigates the utility and validity of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) for use with low-income parents and their 24- to 36-month-old Spanish-English bilingual children (n = 79). Issues in the interpretation of the integrated CDI/Inventarios del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas (IDHC) score to index…

Background: While it has been common practice to discourage second language learning in neurodevelopmental disorders involving language impairment, little is known about the effects of second language exposure (SLE) on broader cognitive function in these children. Past studies have not found differences on language tasks in children with Down…

Virtual worlds are an emerging technology in computer-assisted learning. Due to the novelty of these new learning spaces, little research has been done on the use or the effects on students learning foreign languages. This research looks at how the use of the virtual world Second Life affects the motivation of students in an undergraduate Spanish…

This study explores the effects of Electronic Peer-Assisted Learning for Kids (EPK), on the quality and development of reading skills, peer interaction and self-concept in elementary students. The EPK methodology uses a well-developed, synchronous computer-supported, collaborative learning system to facilitate students' learning in Chinese. We…

Previous research on synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) has shown that SCMC interaction could draw learners' attention to form in ways that are similar to face-to-face interaction. However, the role of task type in focusing learners' attention on form has not been widely researched. In a repeated-measures design, this study…

The research presented in this paper aimed to investigate the linguistic and discourse characteristics of narratives produced by upper-intermediate foreign language learners in a bilingual secondary school. In our analyses we used a variety of linguistic and discourse variables and a recently developed computer tool (Coh-Metrix 2.0: McNamara,…

This article investigates a language learner's cognitive ability (i.e., form-orientation) in detecting the corrective nature of non-salient feedback, by reviewing the operationalizations and reported effectiveness of recasts in recent SLA literature. Two directionalities which seem to have resulted in the divergent findings of recast effectiveness…

Language is seen as a system for communicative purposes and as such it involves more than just a structural organization. Indeed this view of language considers different kinds of competence which make communication really meaningful: linguistic, sociolinguistic discourse, and strategic. Linguistic competence is what we usually regard as the basis…

When English learners are "reclassified" as fluent English proficient, often their instructional setting changes, including a significant reduction in or elimination of English language development services. Depending on a child's language skills, this instructional change could hinder future development or provide needed opportunities…

We are presently witnessing a great shift in how young people learn and in the benefits that social software has to offer. New technologies can augment and build on traditional forms of social learning, giving birth to an improved and more multifaceted approach to knowledge acquisition that complements the current more general shift toward an…

This study focuses on two pre-reading strategies: vocabulary pre-teaching and comprehension question presentation. Researchers have claimed that a vocabulary strategy is less effective than any other pre-reading strategy. This study investigates whether their claim is true of Japanese university students. The purpose of the study is twofold. The…

Malay (Rumi) is alphabetic and has a transparent, agglutinative system of affixation. We manipulated language-specific junctural phonetics in Malay and English to investigate whether morphophonemic L1-knowledge influences L2-processing. A morpheme decision task, "Does this "nonword" sound like a mono- or bi-morphemic English word?", was developed…