A large linguistic distance exists between spoken Arabic and the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the literary language (a diglosia). Novice readers, therefore, struggle with the complex orthography of Arabic as well as the mastering of MSA. Here, we tested whether structured activities in MSA would advance kindergarteners' MSA aptitude by the end of…

Many U.S. classrooms today have at least some children with limited abilities to understand and express themselves in English. Two critical factors spell success or failure for teachers who have dual language learners (DLLs) in their classrooms: the teacher's understanding of and respect for the initial difficulties in learning a second language…