Two key ingredients for developing language skills are output and interaction. The use of computer-mediated communication (often referred to as "CMC") tools and of social networking sites (SNSs) offer a valuable resource to English language teachers and learners who wish to extend learning beyond the classroom walls, especially as…

To learn to read, the brain must repurpose neural systems for oral language and visual processing to mediate written language. We begin with a description of computational models for how alphabetic written language is processed. Next, we explain the roles of a dorsal sublexical system in the brain that relates print and speech, a ventral lexical…

Home and English language learning is essential for young DLLs with disabilities. Early educators as well as parents and other caregivers can implement promising strategies to support home and second language development for young children who are DLLs. This article reviews the importance of adult (e.g., teacher, parent) feedback and language…

This revised edition updates and expands on the first edition published in 2016. In this revised edition, theories of different types of learning strategies are expanded and more recent studies are added. A large amount of tabular information is also reconstructed in a more meaningful manner. The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter one…

Visual arts, such as drawings, are attractive to most young children. Marks left on paper by young children contain meaning. Although it is known that children's oral language could be enhanced through communication with adults, rarely is there a series of dialogues between adults and young children about their drawings. Often heard instead…

Infants and toddlers encounter numerous spoken story experiences early in their lives: conversations, oral stories, and language games such as songs and rhymes. Many adults are even surprised to learn that children this young need these kinds of natural language experiences at all. Adults help very young children take a step along the path toward…

The Atse Kituwah Academy (New Kituwah Academy) houses the new Cherokee immersion school in Cherokee, North Carolina. Cherokee is located on the Qualla Boundary in the mountains of the western part of the state, the contemporary homeland of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI). In 2005, a comprehensive study of the health of the Cherokee…

The purpose of this paper is to describe a variety of teaching and learning strategies that were used within a classroom of Deaf adults participating in a high school English course as part of an upgrading program. The class was conducted in a bilingual manner; that is, being Deaf and communicating with American Sign Language (ASL) was not…

Hearing children from deaf families, Codas, represent a relatively invisible linguistic and cultural minority. Many hearing people are unaware of the fact that American Sign Language (ASL) is a separate language with its own grammatical structure unlike that of English. This misconception has led to an emphasis on oral education for deaf people in…

The population of most Minnesota communities has dramatically changed over the past ten years. The Minnesota State Demographic Center reports the Twin Cities area has the largest Hmong, Somali, and Liberian communities in the United States. In some communities where both jobs and affordable housing are available, the percentage of English as a…

This investigation concerned the socialization experiences and coping strategies of a group of 28 deaf adults who were raised using spoken language. Most respondents reported some level of social isolation because of (1) limitations in communication with hearing peers; (2) missing information in social, academic, and work settings; and (3) a sense…

The origins of tracking, a method for developing more native-like speech for advanced adult English-as-a-Second-Language learners, are discussed, and a rationale for using this method is explained. The method is then presented with enough information for a language teacher to implement it with learners. (Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on ESL Literacy…

Discusses the implications of the tendency of adult second-language learners to develop a well-structured, simple form of language outside the classroom, i.e. the Basic Variety (BV). Focuses on the structural properties of the BV, the status of these properties and the reasons why some structural properties of "fully fledged" languages are more…

Examines why learners of Mandarin use overt nouns and pronouns to a greater extent than native speakers. Findings indicate that no single syntactic structure is a significant contributor to the different rates of optional ellipsis but that some learners use ellipsis only in syntactic contexts permissible in English and most use it in a narrower…

Describes a mispronunciation detection task, in which listeners' sensitivity to deviations in speech is measured by their pressing a button upon hearing a mispronounced word in lists or sentences. Notes that reaction times and miss rates indicate the effects of position of a misplaced phoneme in a word, the size of the phonemic deviation, lexical…