References to the term "incidental vocabulary learning" have become very commonplace not only in second language (L2) acquisition research, but also in empirical research into second and foreign language pedagogy, very often in contrast to "intentional language learning". The former term is associated with more natural language…

The proposals that (a) nonword repetition and word learning both rely on phonological storage and (b) both are multiply determined are two of the major foci of Gathercole's (2006) Keynote Article, which marshals considerable evidence in support of each. In my view, the importance of these proposals cannot be overstated: these two notions go to the…

In her Keynote Article, Gathercole (2006) presents a theoretical framework intended to account for evidence regarding the relation between nonword repetition and word learning. This framework stems from an impressive amount and breadth of research on this topic, including findings from adults and children with typical language abilities as well as…

Because words represent the building blocks upon which the facility to produce and comprehend language at all levels is based, the capacity of a child to learn words has immense impact on his or her developing abilities to communicate and engage properly with the outside world. Both the Keynote Article and the Commentaries in this issue…

The first report of a connection between vocabulary learning and phonological short-term memory was published in 1988 (Baddeley, Papagno, & Vallar, 1988). At that time, both Susan Gathercole and I were involved in longitudinal studies, investigating the relation between nonword repetition and language learning. We both found a connection. Now,…

Four doctoral students and their professor contemplate the value of play in their high school and college classrooms. They discuss their experiences teaching children's books, student illustrations, and excerpts from magazines and newspapers that convey the intricacies of the English language through homonyms, homophones, homographs, and polysemy.…

Responds to criticism on research of the factors influencing nonword repetition performance in a large-scale longitudinal study of children aged between four and six years. (10 references) (GLR)

In line with the original presentation of nonword repetition as a measure of phonological short-term memory (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989), the theoretical account Gathercole (2006) puts forward in her Keynote Article focuses on phonological storage as the key capacity common to nonword repetition and vocabulary acquisition. However, evidence that…

Individual differences in nonword repetition (NWR) show a particularly strong association with vocabulary acquisition for both first- (L1) and second-language (L2) learners, and they serve as a behavioral marker for specific language impairment (SLI) in children (Gathercole, 2006). However, this association is susceptible to alternative…

Outlines some theoretical differences in the interpretation of nonword repetition and discusses how best these differences could be resolved. (eight references) (GLR)

A role is proposed for the lexicon in the grammatical consciousness-raising (GCR) framework for second language teaching outlined by W. Rutherford and M. Sharwood Smith (1987, 1988). First, a lexical framework that offers a series of questions to help teachers discover the relevant semantic and pragmatic information associated with grammatical…

Laments the lack of attention given to interference in vocabulary learning as contrasted with that accorded to interference in the communicative function of language, because the former is of greater qualitative importance. Gives examples from several languages showing the origins and bases of interference. (IFS/WGA)

The last of eight related documents, this booklet is part of a series of papers presented at the 1978 National Right to Read Conference examining issues and problems in literacy. In examining the impact of the back to basics movement on literacy, the booklet cites evidence that the movement suffers from a lack of consensus on the meaning of…

Describes an alternate lexico-semantic view of native language acquisition and adult second language learning that proposes that humans acquire and learn words, names, titles, expressions, sayings, and formulas as undifferentiated lexical items first and then develop systems to store and retrieve the lexemes and combine them into phrases and…

The relation definition theory proposed in this paper is explicitly different from previous semantic memory theories since it is the first to make a relation's definition the basis of semantic processing. The paper suggests that this relation definition theory successfully predicts relation similarity on the basis of one key primary assumption:…