The interaction between input frequency and constructional interference receives little attention in second language (L2) research. Two studies were conducted to test the effect of this interaction. Study 1 examined effects of both Zipfian frequency (ZF) and balanced frequency (BF) on L2 learning of English subject-extracted relative clauses…

I examined students' discourse while working in pairs at the computer in an eighth-grade mathematics class to understand how students kept track of the people and things they discussed. I found that students most often referenced themselves and objects within the environment, through references to shared knowledge and the representations on the…

The present experimental study examined whether a different focus during a pre-task planning observation task affects learners' subsequent oral task performance. Forty-eight ninth-grade students learning German as a foreign language were randomly assigned to two different planning conditions: video observations with a focus on language (FonL) and…

The current study aims to examine the use of chunks and the extent of repetition in Korean middle school English textbooks. Also, the number of chunks shared by three publishers is examined. To create the corpora, 9 textbooks from three publishers were filed and processed by Simple Concordance Program. The results showed that chunk expressions…

Taking a Teacher Language Awareness (TLA) perspective, this paper examines how the concept of deixis is employed in oral discourse in two secondary science and mathematics classes in the southwestern part of the US. Drawing on audio and videotaped data from two classrooms, we examine how verbal deixis, or words and phrases that cannot be fully…

This article reports on a study examining the language practice opportunities that occurred during a range of paired and small group interactive tasks in an intensive English as a Second Language (ESL) class of francophone Grade 6 students. The analysis focussed on the opportunities the tasks provided for the use of two complex and challenging…

The study applied the Multi-Dimensional analysis used by Biber (1988) to examine the functional parameters of essays. Co-occurrence patterns were identified within an essay corpus (n=1529) using a linguistic indices provided by Co-Metrix. These patterns were used to identify essay groups that shared features based upon situational parameters.…

A substantial proportion of children underachieve in reading (Brooks & Tough, 2006; Doubek & Cooper, 2007; Tymms & Merrill, 2007). This paper builds on the existing evidence base for the link between reading and rhythm, presenting findings of an investigation into a rhythm-based music intervention. Following participation in the…

Despite its importance of academic language, research on academic language is often limited to academic vocabulary and focused on the English language learners. Informed by systemic functional linguistics, this study examined adolescents' use of academic language and the relationships between its use and students' reading ability and their writing…

This study examined the relationship of different measures of syntactic complexity with rated quality for two genres of text produced by middle school students. It was hypothesized that different measures would be associated with distinct aspects of syntactic complexity; words per clause with greater use of structures more typical of expository…

Adolescent aspirations associated with perceptions of "living well" were qualitatively evaluated based on 187 middle school student responses. Using grounded theory methodology, 976 words and phrases were coded and grouped; 41.9% were extrinsic, 36.3% were intrinsic, and 21.8% of the passages were merely descriptive. Extrinsic coded…