Category: Language Development & Literacy
Oral Communicative Competence: Explicit Teaching and Systematic Practice in Portuguese L1 Classes–Impact of a Program Implemented in Middle School
Oral language skills support not only the oral communicative competence itself but also reading skills. However, the development of oral communicative competence has not received the same attention in research as reading or even writing has. The main goal of this study was to examine the effect of the oral skills training program “Communication and …
The Use of Grade-Level Readers in the Foundation Phase
Grade-Level Readers in the form of Reading Anthologies are provided in South African Foundation Phase classrooms (Grades 1-3) for home language learners in order to promote their reading interest and make teaching reading easier. However, evidence shows that teachers lack an understanding of teaching reading in line with methodologies prescribed in the curriculum. This study …
The Communication Role of Chinese Male and Female Educators in Their Interactions With Preschool Children During Free Play
The communication role of adults in child-addressed talk is critical for shaping children’s language learning experiences. This study examined differences in communication role between male and female educators in their spontaneous interactions with preschool children during free play, as well as children’s responses to their educators’ initiations. According to systemic functional linguistic theory (SFL)，communication role …
The Influence of Family Socioeconomic Status on the Children’s Early Vocabulary Development in Mandarin Chinese
The study used 45 children aged from 3-5 years old as participants, through the distribution of questionnaires, parents’ reports, and the construction of communicative inventories in Mandarin to examine the differences in productive vocabulary use and expression among children with a variety of socioeconomic status, and further investigate the correlation and influence of SES on …
The Impact of the Home Literacy Environment on the Development of Written Narrative Skills in Chinese Children Aged 8–11 Years
Being the hot topic of applied linguistics，narrative skills have been widely studied over the past decades given their great significance to children’s language and cognitive development. In spite of the numerous studies on narratives，very little is known about the impact of the home literacy environment on children’s narrative development. To this end，this study aims to …
UX Evaluation of a School Newspaper Creation Platform
Media and information literacy is an increasingly important skill, especially for the younger audiences who consume and believe in information that may not be credible. Thus, school journalism can contribute to combat misinformation and develop media literacy in young people. This paper reports on a platform developed to create school newspapers and support news writing …
Modeling the Relationships Among Family’s Socioeconomic Status, Home Literacy Environment, Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension Ability in Chinese Preschool Children
The study aims to examine the relationships among family’s socioeconomic status (SES), home literacy environment (reading resources and reading activities available at home), and Chinese children’s vocabulary and reading comprehension ability. A total of 594 Chinese preschool children (293 boys; mean age = 62.01 months; 130 in K1, 180 in K2, and 284 in K3) …
Long Distance Recordingship: Assessing the Use of Remote Recordings in Acoustic Research on Serbian EFL Students’ Acquisition of English VOT
Though research in acoustic phonetics entails laboratory conditions, the rapid technological development accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic bids the question of remote recording, the success of which could provide phoneticians with more research opportunities. This paper explores the feasibility of remote sample collection in the context of examining the degree of aspiration in initial voiceless …
Multimedia-Enhanced English Presentation Training With the Audience in Mind
This study presents the initial findings from a comprehensive 16-week presentation skills training program designed for Taiwanese college students who possess intermediate to advanced English proficiency. The program utilized multimedia tutorials on infographics and various presentation tools, and provided one-on-one diagnostic sessions as well as workshops by field experts on modern presentation requirements which included …
Children’s Narrative Drawing and Early Literacy
In literate societies of the 21st century, written language seems to play a decisive role in both the working and social life of individuals and for this reason, educational reforms focus on children’s development of literacy. Great importance is attached to individuals’ ability to read and understand what they read, since this ability is the …
Content and Language Integrated Learning for CSL Students Using a Picture-Book Approach: An Action Research in Hong Kong Kindergartens
This paper examines the function of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach in complementary multilingual kindergarten classrooms for non-Chinese-speaking (NCS) children learning Chinese characters in Hong Kong. The module of this study was implemented with a picture-book approach. The participants comprised 28 learners of Chinese in the third year of kindergarten (K3) from both …
Vocabulary-Enhanced ESP for Physical Therapy
A large population uses English for Specific Purpose (ESP) instructions with a content-based approach in Japanese universities. Given this trend, various studies have been conducted that focus on ESP’s theory, status, effects, and issues. Many have suggested further effective implementation of the ESP program, thus emphasizing the importance of acquiring vocabularies. Believing in the requirement …
Multimodal Communication in the Literacy Classroom
Literacy can be defined in a multitude of academic and non-academic ways. However, for the purposes of this presentation, it will be characterized as multimodal communication. With this in mind, the connection between literacy and popular culture becomes intrinsic and can be seen through both the education and entertainment industries. Educational or academic literacy offers …
Language Development and Creative Expression Through Nonsense Verse
The present article examines the development of language skills through unconventional expression as used in the nonsense verse of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. It analyzes student reaction to and comprehension of these readings from an extratextual perspective prior to instructor-led readings and peer interpretation exercises. Student exercises to be examined include presumed definitions of …
Evaluation of Secondary School EFL Textbook Used in Public Schools: A Case of Oman
Textbooks are undoubtedly the most important components of English language classrooms and fulfill a range of needs in terms of language acquisition. Considering their pivotal role in language learning, their routine evaluation is essential to confirm whether they are instrumental in achieving the desired outcomes or not. This study evaluated the secondary school grade 11 …
Filipino for Beginners: Teaching Filipino Language to the Japanese Students of Kagoshima University, Japan
The discourse on the study of Filipino has crossed into the global space that is being taught in different parts of the world. In 2011, Filipino for Beginners (FFB) began to be taught with the aim of teaching basic Filipino language learning to Japanese college students at Kagoshima University (K.U), Japan. The purpose of the …
Text Summarization of News in Tamil Epaper Using Machine Learning
Automatic text summarization is the process of reducing the size of original content to reduced computational burden of handling original large volume of data. There are many research works has been introduced earlier for the automatic text summarization. In the existing work Machine Learning based Automatic Text Summarization (MLATS) is introduced for the automatic summarization …
Parent-Child Dialogic Reading: A Conversation Analytic Case Study
A large body of work has addressed the positive impact of parent-child interactive reading (also referred to as dialogic reading or shared reading) for children’s language and literacy development. What has been lacking in research is how interaction takes place in a parent-child read-aloud. How interaction takes place is the domain of conversation analysis (CA), …
No Bells and Whistles: Technologically Simplified Instruction in Scholarly Reading and Writing
The Scholarly Reading eWriting Intensive was developed by an English language program in a large public university as a rapid response to the move online in the spring of 2020. Amidst the early days of the pandemic, there was concern about students’ need for “live” Zoom-style contact with other students and instructors. However, the author …
A Critical Comparison of the Lifewide and Lifelong Literacy Practices of Two Adults
The field of literacy studies has witnessed a paradigmatic shift over the past few decades — from a skills-based paradigm towards one shaped by socio-cultural practices. Informed by this social constructivist turn, this study critically compares and contrasts the lifelong and lifewide literacy practices of two adults (Daiyu and myself). Based on thematic analysis of …
A Child’s Meaning-Making during COVID-19
Situated in a bounded socio-geographical context (i.e., Vancouver, Canada), this ethnographic individual case study provides an in-depth analysis of a bilingual young girl’s home literacy practices of meaning-making established across semiotic modes (i.e., linguistic, visual, audio, spatial, embodied, kinesthetic) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Framed within multimodality as its main theoretical perspective and drawing and play …
Engaging Parents in Newcomer Children’s Language Teaching and Learning
This study examines benefits that arise from the pedagogical practice of translanguaging, which utilizes bilingual children’s full language repertoire, in a pre-kindergarten classroom where parents are invited to join their children, bringing their home language alongside the English instructional language to the classroom. Extensive research demonstrates that when parents are engaged in their children’s teaching …
Learner Autonomy and Self-regulated Learning: The Case of University – Level French as a Foreign Language (FFL) Students
French as a foreign language (FFL) is the second most popular international language in Ghana after English, but very few Ghanaians speak French, even though it is a core subject in elementary school and an elective subject in high schools. While the general aim of most language learners remains the development of communication competence, we …
Sounds and Sippy Cups: New Approaches to Pre-Literacy in Adaptive Game-Based Learning for Young Children
Decades of research from interdisciplinary fields (e.g. developmental psychology/linguistics, cognitive psychology/neuroscience, educational research) have yielded tremendous insights into the process of learning to read (i.e., Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Scarborough, 2001; Ehri, 1996; Kilpatrick, 2015). Yet, only about one-third of four graders in the United States are reading with accuracy, understanding, and fluency (NCES, 2019). …
Rethinking Research: Bridging Theory and Practice in Adult Literacy
Low literacy rates in the US are explained in research based on several factors: from literacy programs’ inability to support educator and tutor professional development to shortcomings in program evaluation such as assessment and accountability measurement error (Comings & Soricone, 2007). Research also determines that low literacy rates are exacerbated by lack of funding assistance …
Using Constructivist Pedagogies to Support Foreign Language Teaching in Remote Spaces
This paper discusses the experiences of one teacher’s experiences as she pivoted to remote teaching in response to the pandemic. In the spring of 2020, schools across the globe were thrust into emergency planning as they pivoted from face-to-face teaching in brick and mortar classrooms to remote instruction in response to pandemic-related school closures. Using …
Supporting Literacy in High Poverty Areas
This virtual presentation will focus on the affects that poverty has on literacy and literacy instruction. Literacy development can be supported by print-rich homes; however, due to the effects of poverty, especially generational, many children are growing up with limited interactions of reading materials outside of school. While the effects of poverty will be shared, …
Employing English Literature to Craft Skills: Listening Speaking, Reading, Writing
The purpose of the present study is to use English Literature to enhance Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing by the application of Outcome Based Education. The study addressed the need to develop enhanced objectivity and tame the scientific minds of mixed semester undergraduate, Engineering and Computer Science students with emotive aspects. Students comprehended aspects of …
Oral Language and Comprehension as a Predictor of School Readiness Using Preschool Early Literacy Indicators
The REDY, Set, Start: School Readiness for All! study attempts to improve school readiness for pre-kindergarten students in North Carolina by nurturing oral language development in early childhood programs. This study was designed to address the achievement gap in gifted education among underrepresented students with a special emphasis on low-income and at-risk children. There are …
New Literacy Practices: Imaginative Implications for 21st Century Literate Identities
The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the intersection of new literacy practices and literate identities. The experiences of young adolescents were examined to better understand how these experiences and their perceptions impact the development of their literate identities in multiple contexts. As such, this study sought to explore the following research …
Mandarin Language Classroom Anxiety: Basis for a Proposed Teacher Manual
This study investigated the Mandarin language classroom anxiety of the Grade 8 to 10 students from two schools in Pampanga – Don Jesus Gonzales High School, Pandacaqui, Mexico and Mabalacat National High School, Dau, Mabalacat – with 253 language learners as the respondents of the study. The Chinese Language Learning Anxiety Scale of Lou (2014) …