"Dialogic Reading" is an interactive shared picture book reading practice designed to enhance young children's language and literacy skills. During the shared reading practice, the adult and the child switch roles so that the child learns to become the storyteller with the assistance of the adult who functions as an active listener and…

This study compared the performance of students with and without learning disabilities (LD) on a mathematics test using a standard administration procedure and a read-aloud accommodation. Analyses were conducted on the test scores of 625 middle and high school students (n = 388 with LD) on two equivalent 30-item multiple-choice tests. Whereas mean…

Anna is a 13-year-old student who has a learning disability and is eligible for special education and related services. Anna's parents enrolled her in the Private Academy for fifth grade; her frustration, inappropriate behaviors, and inattention had increased during fourth grade. In its year-end report, the Private Academy described Anna's…

In light of a major study on educational outcomes, this paper explores how Aboriginal language dominance and virtually exclusive use of oral communications in one Aboriginal group has been affected by its interaction with Western institutions. For several years negotiations have been undertaken among the Innu Nation of Labrador, the province of…

In the Singlish-"Good" English debate, the use of Singlish (SCE) is viewed as an obstacle to the development of students' literacy skills in standard English (SSE) and so the practice of classroom codeswitching between the two varieties is strongly discouraged. Yet the presence of the vernacular in the classroom continues to be robust.…

This study examines and compares the production of discourse markers by native speakers and learners of English based on a pedagogic sub-corpus from CANCODE, a corpus of spoken British English, and a corpus of interactive classroom discourse of secondary pupils in Hong Kong. The results indicate that in both groups discourse markers serve as…

This volume examines the ramifications of individual differences in therapy outcomes for a wide variety of communication disorders. In an era where evidence-based practice is the clinical profession's watchword, each chapter attacks this highly relevant issue from a somewhat different perspective. In some areas of communication disorders,…

A discussion of phonetic transcription looks at the weaknesses of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a cumbersome system to use with typewriter and computer keyboards, and offers an alternative. It is noted that the IPA, a system of symbols devised for handwritten transcription, is rarely used by second language teachers or instructional…

Extends James Heap's sociologically based viewpoint regarding reading as a cultural activity. Focuses on two neglected topics: the relationship of written and oral texts; and intertextuality uses regarding the range of texts encountered in everyday life. Heap's texts have too much autonomy; the reader is just as vital as the text. (13 references)…

We examined the oral and written spelling performance on the Treiman-Bourassa Early Spelling Test (Treiman & Bourassa, 2000a) of 30 children with serious reading and spelling problems and 30 spelling-level-matched younger children who were progressing normally in learning to read and spell. The 2 groups' spellings were equivalent on a composite…

The involvement of syllables in the perception of spoken English has traditionally been regarded as minimal because of ambiguous syllable boundaries and overriding rhythmic segmentation cues. The present experiments test the perceptual separability of syllables and vowels in spoken English using the migration paradigm. Experiments 1 and 2 show…

The relationships between phoneme categorisation, phonological processing, and reading performance were examined in Chinese-English speaking children in an English-speaking environment. Second language (L2, i.e., English) phonological processing but not phoneme categorisation was related to L2 reading. First language (L1) oral language skills were…

This study investigates the presence and latency of the P600 component in response to subject-verb agreement violations in spoken language in people with and without developmental dyslexia. The two groups performed at-ceiling level on judging the sentences on their grammaticality, but the ERP data revealed subtle differences between them. The P600…

Phonological awareness, an understanding that spoken language is comprised of individual sounds, is an important construct that has implications for educational assessment and intervention. Unfortunately, the relationship between phonological awareness and its many operationalizations is ambiguous, resulting in both theoretical and practical…

"Is academic speech "more like" casual conversation or academic writing?" [Swales, J. (2001). "Metatalk in American academic talk. The cases of 'point' and 'thing'." "Journal of English Language," 29(1), p. 37]. Taking a corpus-based perspective to the analysis, this study compares the language of university classroom talk to academic prose and…