Cross-sectional studies have shown the connections between oral language, reading, and writing skills, but there has been limited longitudinal research, especially in primary school. This study examined the relationships between oral narrative, reading, and writing skills in a longitudinal sample of 80 Italian-speaking primary school children…

Assessing student mathematical knowledge is an important factor in the mathematics learning process because students obtain important feedback to improve their knowledge and learning. Despite the importance of student assessment, several researchers have shown that student grades comprise noncognitive and metacognitive factors and teachers'…

Connecting physics with the humanities is a fascinating challenge and a complicated cultural task. Yet, it is exactly what the Italian secondary-school graduation exam requires in its oral part. Although it has been criticized by teachers and students, here I provide a list of real school life examples and discuss why this can be a great,…

It has been well documented that oral language skills are precursors of the development of written abilities, meaning that improving oral language skills, e.g. vocabulary, listening comprehension, could have positive effects reading comprehension. The main aim of the present study was to analyze the effect of a training program focused on four…

Scientific English is a section of academic English which refers to the study of scientific subjects like biology and chemistry rather than humanistic subjects such as history and literature. The teaching of Scientific English can be a demanding task for language teachers since it concerns not only the common instruction of linguistic aspects of…

We conducted a multisite replication of Yang and Lyster's (2010) study investigating the effects of recasts and prompts on learning English regular and irregular past tense. Our study was conducted with intact high school and vocational school classes in Italy and Bosnia. Our participants were young adolescents (14-15 and 16-17 years old), a…

Helping second language (L2) learners to enhance their oral skills is vitally important, and pedagogical approaches are often seen as challenging when offering learners chances to successfully develop them. This article shares the experiences of a class of final-year high-school Italian learners (n =10) who learned English using theatre plays both…

This case study explores the cognitive and emotional development of a university student using the schema of a complete orienting basis of action (SCOBA) in her learning of Italian as a foreign language. The article follows Marie, a 19-year-old undergraduate student, as she used a SCOBA that illustrated the concept of Genre and Register in…

Individuals with sex chromosome trisomies (SCTs) have an increased risk of language delays and impairments. However, there are only a few data relative to their language development in early childhood. The present study aimed to investigate the preverbal skills shown by a group of 8-month-old children with SCTs to assess the presence of a possible…