Academic language has been shown to significantly contribute to success across school subjects. However, to date, there are no empirical studies addressing its development across primary school age. The present study investigated the growth of academic vocabulary and influential conditions from Grades 2 to 4 based on a newly developed and…

The majority of studies examining the language and literacy skills of second generation immigrant bilingual children have focused on the breadth of lexical knowledge in populations with a low level of involvement in literacy activities. This study extends previous work in three ways. First, we focused on a sample of second generation immigrant…

Children with reading disability and normal reading development were compared in their ability to discriminate native (English) and novel language (Mandarin) from nonlinguistic sounds. Children's preference for native versus novel language sounds and for disyllables containing dominant trochaic versus non-dominant iambic stress patterns was also…

Language immersion students' lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic competencies are well documented, yet their phonological skill has remained relatively unexplored. This study investigates the Spanish vowel productions of a cross-sectional sample of 35 one-way Spanish immersion students. Learner productions were analyzed acoustically and compared to…

The possible advantage of bilingual children over monolinguals in analyzing word meanings from verbal context was examined. The subjects were 40 third-grade children (20 bilingual and 20 monolingual) recruited from independent schools in the USA. The two groups of participants were compared on their performance on a standardized test of receptive…

Using an adaptation of a miscue taxonomy developed by Cziko, a study compared the reading performance of: (1) English-monolingual and bilingual third-grade students reading in English; (2) Spanish-monolingual and bilingual third-grade students reading in Spanish, and (3) bilingual third-grade students reading in Spanish and English. The subjects…

A study compared the reading strategies in Spanish of three third-graders: two monolingual Spanish-speakers and one bilingual English-Spanish speaker. The Miscue Analysis Inventory was used for data analysis. Results indicated that the three readers performed below the proficient reader level, and their miscues followed similar patterns. The main…

An adaptation of a miscue taxonomy developed by G. A. Cziko was used to compare the reading performance of (1) monolingual English and bilingual third grade students reading in English, (2) monolingual Spanish and bilingual third grade students reading in Spanish, and (3) bilingual third grade students reading in both English and Spanish. Eight…

A study examined the effects of differing degrees of bilingualism (English monolingual, English-French balanced bilingual, Bengali-English partial bilingual) on nonverbal problem-solving abilities of 71 grade-three children. The groups were compared on control of attention and analysis of knowledge. Results indicate the balanced bilinguals…

A study of third- and fifth-grade students found that monolingual students use different reading strategies than do bilingual students reading in their second language. (FL)

A study investigated the relationship between relative language proficiency and the types of questions produced by bilingual children in different settings and situations, taking into account the whole language repertoire in both languages and in different settings. The subjects were six third-graders in a self-contained maintenance bilingual…

A study investigated the use of questions and directives by bilingual children of variable relative proficiency in Spanish and English. Patterns in the use of each question and directive type were examined in relation to language proficiency and context of use. Qualitative characteristics of the questions and directives were analyzed. The subjects…