Self-directed learning and self-assessment require student responsibility over learning needs, goals, processes, and outcomes. However, this student-led learning can be challenging to achieve in a classroom limited by a one-to-many teacher-led instruction. We, thus, have designed and prototyped a generative artificial intelligence chatbot…

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is purportedly the only L2 pedagogy rooted in SLA theory and research and is unique in its psycholinguistic, ecological and pedagogical validity. Theoretical entities such as Processability Theory (Pienemann & Lenzing, 2020), the cognitive-interactionist approach (Gass & Mackey, 2020), and emergentism…

For academic success, it is increasingly important that students of all ages can produce and comprehend expository discourse. This article provides guidance to clinicians and educators on using language sample analysis (LSA) to assess the expository language abilities of students across grades. Focusing on microstructural and macrostructural…

This paper presents a Vygotskian research device that focuses on collaborative activities based on the manipulation of linguistic objects in a primary school classroom, with 8-9-year-old children. Through social exchanges among the different points of view, the children were engaged in a dynamic process of building and negotiating mathematical…

Word frequency is an important predictor of lexical-decision task performance. The current study further examined the role of this variable by exploring the influence of frequency trajectory. Frequency trajectory is measured by how often a word occurs in childhood relative to adulthood. Past research on the role of this variable in word…

Today, L.S. Vygotsky's concept of a 'zone of proximal development' (ZPD) is often used to just mean best practices in early years teaching, like scaffolding. But in his original theory, the zones linked age periods distinguished by age-specific neoformations -- one of which was the formation of concepts at adolescence. So Vygotsky rejected Stern's…

Socioeconomic status (SES) has been shown to influence language skills, with children of lower SES backgrounds performing worse on language assessments compared to their higher SES peers. While there is abundant behavioral research on the effects of SES, whether there are differences in the neural mechanisms used to support language skill is less…

This article provides a microscopic view of learners' first encounters with multimodal texts in their primary EFL classrooms. It is argued that multimodal texts create opportunities for language development in the primary EFL classroom: they offer different access points for comprehension, invite participation, and motivate repeated practice so…

The purpose of this article is to question the suitability of the phonics screening check in relation to models and theories of reading development. The article questions the appropriateness of the check by drawing on theoretical frameworks which underpin typical reading development. I examine the Simple View of Reading developed by Gough and…

In this chapter, we describe several intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) designed to support student literacy through reading comprehension and writing instruction and practice. Although adaptive instruction can be a powerful tool in the literacy domain, developing these technologies poses significant challenges. For example, evaluating the…

In the present study we examined the effect of hearing status on reading vocabulary development. More specifically, we examined the change of lexical competence in children with hearing loss over grade 4-7 and the predictors of this change. Therefore, we used a multi-factor longitudinal design with multiple outcomes, measuring the reading…

Individual differences in nonword repetition are associated with language and literacy development, but few studies have considered the extent to which learning to read influences phonological skills as indexed by nonword repetition performance. We explored this question using a latent variable longitudinal design. Reading, oral language and…

We investigated the role of number agreement on verb and of animacy in the comprehension of subject and object relative clauses in 51 monolingual Italian-speaking children, mean age 9:33, tested through a self-paced listening experiment with a final comprehension question. A "digit span test" and a "listening span test" were…

This study examined how 6-9 year-old English-speaking children and adults establish anaphoric dependencies during auditory sentence comprehension. Using eye-movement monitoring during listening and a corresponding sentence-picture judgment task, we investigated both the ultimate interpretation and the online processing of reflexives in comparison…

As part of an evaluation of a web-based early literacy intervention, ABRACADABRA, a small exploratory study was conducted over one term in three primary schools in the Northern Territory. Of particular concern was the relationship between attendance and the acquisition of early literacy skills of Indigenous and non-Indigenous children. Using the…