Choosing a writing topic poses a particularly serious challenge for young learners. Topic selection affects all other steps of the writing process. Therefore, the writing topic should be related to a subject that the student knows about, is interested in, and can produce content on. Basing writing on students' immediate environment and experiences…

The increasing number of students with German as a second language (GL2) poses a great challenge for schools. Previous studies showed that especially young learners with a migration background are lagging behind in the acquisition of second language (L2) literacy. Experiencing problem behaviors (PB) in addition, might pose even greater challenges.…

Response to intervention (RTI) has been promoted for nearly 20 years as a valid supplement to or alternative method of learning disability (LD) identification. Nevertheless, important unresolved questions remain about its role in disability identification. We had two purposes when conducting this study of 229 economically and racially diverse poor…

Several studies have highlighted that children with reading comprehension difficulties also have problems in tasks that involve telling a story, in writing or verbally. The main differences identified regard poor comprehenders' lower level of coherence in their productions by comparison with good comprehenders. Only one study has compared poor and…

Poor word learning is a hallmark characteristic of students with specific language impairment (SLI). Explicit vocabulary instruction has shown to positively improve word learning in this population. Mobile technology has many advantages making it conducive for addressing the word learning needs of students with SLI. The current study utilized a…

We provided a multicomponent academic vocabulary intervention to six English learners with learning difficulties in a fifth-grade general education setting. A multiple probe design across word sets and replicated across students evaluated the effects of the intervention on students' use of expressive language to read and define content-specific…

Purpose: The authors created a database of expository oral language samples with the aims of describing the nature of students' expository discourse and providing benchmark data for typically developing preteen and teenage students. Method: Using a favorite game or sport protocol, language samples were collected from 235 typically developing…

This study tested the theory that future poor comprehenders would show modest but pervasive deficits in both language comprehension and production during early childhood as compared with future poor decoders and typical readers. Using an existing database (NICHD ECCRN), fifth-grade students were identified as having poor comprehension skills…

This paper investigated the predictive ability of expressive vocabulary size and lexical composition at age 2 on later language and literacy skills from ages 3 through 11. Multivariate analysis of covariance was performed to compare 16 language and literacy outcomes between children with large expressive vocabulary size at 24 months (N = 1,073)…

Effective written expression is a necessary form of communication and one of the most difficult tasks for students with disabilities to master. Few instructional strategies for writing have been validated specifically for students with emotional and behavior disorders. This single-subject study evaluated the effect of a Direct Instruction program…

Through their study of classroom talk about and around literary text, the authors discovered that their application of Rosenblatt's (1938/1995, 1978) "aesthetic" stance to elementary (primarily Grades 4-6) students' affective responses to literary text uniformly lacked the simultaneous articulation of "the real impact between the…

A large body of evidence shows that many of the academic difficulties Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) children have may be related to their problems in executive control. However, the particular case of expressive writing has not been deeply explored. The present study examines the typical school exercise of writing a letter.…

The present study examines the expressive writing abilities of children described by their teachers as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms and of matched controls and the effects of two types of facilitation. A group of 35 ADHD children and matched controls are given the task of composing a letter either under standard…

Written language performance of 16 11th-grade students differed significantly from their fifth grade performance. Few differences occurred between teachers and eleventh grade students for total amounts of linguistic information used. (CM)