The ability to express oneself through written language is a critically important skill for long-term educational, emotional, and social success. However, despite the importance of writing, English Learner students continue to perform at or below basic levels which warrants additional efforts to identify specific areas of weakness that impact…

This study aimed to detect the extent to which comprehending elliptical structures predicted reading comprehension. The study utilized a correlational survey model, and participants involved a total of 173 middle school students. Data were collected through two different tools based on the same text in 2019. The ellipsis comprehension test…

Although numerous studies show that intelligence, measured by various tests, is a significant predictor of school achievement, this cognitive variable can only explain about 50% of the variance. It is also known that communicative language ability represents an important basis for learning subject content in the early period of formal education.…

To investigate L2 adolescent learners' use of machine translation (MT), an MT error correction (EC) test was developed, based on the analysis of MT errors arising from translating the learners' L1 of middle school EFL textbooks. Learners were also asked to report on their use of MT EC strategies on the EC task. Results indicated that…

Purpose: This study examines the written language samples of fifth grade English learner (EL) students with and without diagnosed language-based learning disabilities (LLDs) in an effort to explore the utility of such supplemental materials for aiding in differential diagnosis of ELs with and without LLDs. Method: This sample of 127 fifth grade…

This study aims to examine how Chinese learners develop in their use and misuse of English modal verbs from Grade 7 to 9. Specifically, it examines form-function connections and explores the factors behind learners' development. The main focus is on the modal verbs "can," "could," "will," "would,"…

This study demonstrates how native and learner corpora can enhance modal verb treatment in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) textbooks used in mainland China. Data analysis compares modal verbs in the textbook and native corpus by referring to distributional features, semantic functions and co-occurring constructions; and the analysis of the…

Language is a magical key that human beings hold in their hands to open the door of communication. To succeed in communication, formal links are one of the aspects of language that need to be known and used in discourse in addition to the contextual factors (Cook, 1992). Hence, systematic exposure to them is essential for satisfactory language…

The purpose of this research was to identify the common errors made in English writing by Malaysian Chinese primary year 6 ESL students and to determine the extent of the influence of the first language, Mandarin in ESL writing. The Mandarin language uses a logographic writing system while the English language is written in alphabetic scripts. The…

This study was designed to (1) investigate the procedure responsible for successful written subject-verb agreement, and (2) describe how it develops across grades. Students in Grades 3, 5 and 12 were asked to read noun-noun-verb sentences aloud (e.g., "Le chien des voisins mange" ["The dog of the neighbors eats"]) and write out…

Third and 5th grade Hebrew-speaking children performed two sentence completion tasks, one requiring the assignment of male, female, or gender-ambiguous names and the inflection of verbs for male-stereotyped, female-stereotyped, and gender-neutral activities, and the other task, of inflecting verbs for male- and female-stereotyped activities…

This study examined the effectiveness of Zipfian frequency at facilitating the acquisition of English prenominal past participles. Chinese middle school students (N = 103) were randomly assigned to a sequenced Zipfian frequency (SZF) group, a random Zipfian frequency (RZF) group, a balanced frequency (BF) group, and a control group. A mixed…

Several studies on children and adults with and without linguistic impairment have reported differences between verb and noun processing. The present study assessed whether noun and verb bases affect differently children's reading of derived words. Thirty-six Italian good readers and 18 poor readers, all 4th or 5th graders, were asked to read…

The study aims to investigate to what extent Chinese EFL learners' language use is influenced by English textbooks. Such influence may suggest the existence of lexical priming effects. Based on detailed and systematic analysis of a learner English corpus, in comparison with a textbook corpus, the present study revealed striking similarities of the…

How does teacher-guided whole-class interaction contribute to expanding students' potential for making and exchanging mathematical meanings? We address this question through an interpretative analysis of a whole-group conversation in a sixth grade class taught by an experienced teacher in a school in Southern Argentina. The extended interaction…