The purpose of this study was to examine the character identification strategies of Chinese children during their oral reading of a continuous text. Eighteen second graders' oral reading of a story, as well as an interview about their decoding strategies, were audiotaped and transcribed. The results generally converged with those of previous oral…

For several years children at Joyce Public School have been rewriting traditional stories from localized cultural and linguistic perspectives, creating innovative, individualized narrative forms with digital technology. Our experimental multiliteracies research project is a collaboration of school and university teachers and researchers following…

This paper examines evaluation in reading. Evaluation refers to the processes by which readers monitor their ongoing text comprehension to assess performance and task difficulties. Monitoring is assumed to explain a large proportion of individual differences in text comprehension, in that individuals need to be aware of their objectives and…

Language teachers are called upon to understand both the nature of students' intercultural competence and their own role in its development. Limited research attention has been paid to the relationship between the types of behaviour that language teachers model and the intercultural competence their students acquire. This article reports on a case…

This article describes a literacy project with fourth-grade Latino students in a bilingual U.S. classroom and provides some insights on the importance of encouraging children's uses of two languages for communicating, reading, and writing in the classroom. The author discusses the following implications: (1) Teachers should encourage their…

Certain aspects of meta-linguistic awareness are known to be essential for bilingual children's literacy acquisition. Phonological awareness is one of these skills. Beginning with a discussion of a pivotal developmental research model of control & analysis of cognitive skills in bilinguals, this review will discuss several studies that explored…

This study is a modest attempt to use three Korean primary school children and their English diaries as go-betweens to mediate in an apparent dispute between the founding fathers of socio-cultural theory about the nature of language and language awareness. According to Bruner, Vygotsky holds that mediation by others and self-mediation of written…

Zo eplicates in a synchronous learning environment a study that looked at the effectiveness of providing two types of corrective feedback to students in the classroom. Elementary learners of L2 English (N = 31) completed two communicative tasks, during which time they received either recasts (implicit feedback) or metalinguistic information…

This article reports on the Slovene share in the European project called Janua Linguarum--The Gateway to Languages. It highlights its forerunners and its outcomes, and gives an illustrative example of how primary school students encounter and explore various languages by using a relatively novel, plurilingual approach. All the materials produced…

First published in 2007. The focus of this book is on the cognitive processes involved in comprehension, and moreover, on techniques that help readers improve their ability to comprehend text and it is also on reading comprehension strategies. Indeed, the use of effective reading comprehension strategies is perhaps the most important means to…

The paper presents the language policies being implemented in French primary schools under the present educational reform and considers how they tackle the question of sociocultural and linguistic pluralism. It questions the choice of teaching one foreign language from a very early age at kindergarten rather than opting for a model of language…

In this article, Marilyn Chapman provides educators and others interested in early literacy with important information about phonemic awareness to help them make decisions about what to do in their schools. She begins with an explanation of phonemic awareness and how it relates to other aspects of literacy development such as phonological…

The beginning of the 21st century in England has seen a rapid growth in interest in foreign languages for primary age learners. This article presents an alternative approach to primary school languages based on a Nuffield-funded pilot in Coventry LEA. A brief overview of recent developments in primary MFL is provided, followed by an account of the…

This paper reports on a sociocultural study conducted in a Catholic primary school in the Australian outback and provides insights into how policy related to Languages Other Than English (LOTE) programmes is implemented in a specific location and interwoven within the literacy practices of children, parents and teachers. A case study that tracked…