Research Findings: The present study investigates both the proximal processes and contextual influences on children's oral language development in preschool. We examine whether teacher language practices vary across activity settings and program type, which teacher language practices predict children's oral language skills, and potential…

The limited research available on writing in Grade 1 led to the development and implementation of an intervention for students who were performing below expectations. Ten students participated in a writing intervention for 11-13 weeks. A multiple baseline design across three units of instruction was focused on (a) paragraph structure, (b) sentence…

Purpose: Many children begin school with limited vocabularies, placing them at a high risk of academic difficulties. The goal of this study was to examine the effects of a vocabulary intervention program, "Story Friends," designed to improve vocabulary knowledge of at-risk preschool children. Method: Twenty-four early-childhood…

This paper addresses the issue of integrating students with special needs into foreign language programs in the early childhood years. A partnership between a university and a charter school in central Florida began as a result of parent and teacher interest in providing a foreign language program for its prekindergarten students. Since 2014,…

This study investigates second language acquisition of learners enrolled in a dual language/two-way bilingual immersion program. Two groups of third-grade students participated in this study. The first group was composed of Spanish-dominant participants learning English, and the second group was composed of English-dominant students learning…

The population of Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the United States continues to increase and there is a significant need to develop psychometrically sound early language and literacy screening measures to accurately capture children's ability in Spanish. In this paper, we describe the innovative design and calibration process of the new…

Reading comprehension, defined as the active extraction and construction of meaning from all kinds of text, requires children to fluently decode and understand what they are reading. Basic processes underlying reading comprehension are complex and call on the oral language system and a conscious understanding of this system, i.e., metalinguistic…