This descriptive study examined the extratextual utterances of 10 special education teachers as they engaged in shared reading with groups of their students with extensive support needs (ESN) in special education classrooms. The independent variables were grade band (i.e., elementary, middle, high) and students' expressive language (i.e., high…

We examined the relation of morphological awareness with language and literacy skills, namely phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, vocabulary, word reading, spelling, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension. We also examined potential moderators of the relations (grade level, orthographic depth of language, receptive vs.…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the appropriateness of standardized assessments of expressive grammar and vocabulary in a sample of preschool-age dual language learners (DLLs) who use Jamaican Creole (JC) and English. Adult models from the same linguistic community as these children were used to inform culturally and…

The purpose of this research study is to compare the effects of digital, dialogic and traditional reading on children's language development aged 48-66 months. Fifty-six randomly selected children enrolled in three different classrooms in a public preschool in Turkey participated in the study. The three classrooms were again randomly assigned as…

In English as a lingua franca (ELF) communication, in which English is used as a common language among interlocutors of different first languages, successful communication often features communication strategies that enhance mutual understanding and relationship management. Although prior research suggests that including such strategies in English…

There have been a number of studies on the use of complaints as a speech act. The majority of these studies have included analysis of how different first language speakers make complaints while only a limited number of studies have examined the effects of instruction on the development of complaints as a speech act. Those that have examined this…

This paper attempts to investigate the repetition of Relative Clauses (RCs) in Mandarin children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) (aged 4; 5 to 6; 0) and their typically developing (TD) peers. The results of a sentence repetition task indicate that Mandarin children with DLD perform significantly worse than both groups of TD children,…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or with Down syndrome (DS) show diagnosis-specific differences from typically developing (TD) children in gesture production. We asked whether these differences reflect the differences in parental gesture input. Our systematic observations of 23 children with ASD and 23 with DS (M[subscript…

Purpose: This study reexamines the claim that difficulty forming memories of words comprising uncommon sound sequences (i.e., low phonological neighborhood density words) is a determinant of delayed expressive vocabulary development (e.g., Stokes, 2014). Method: We modeled communicative development inventory data from (N = 442) 18-month-old…

Late language emergence (LLE) may result from genetic and environmental factors. Little is known about environmental factors in LLE in South Africa. The study describes the nature of differences in language functioning between toddlers with LLE and without LLE, and which factors were associated with LLE in a middle-income area in South Africa.…

In this paper, we first sketch the joint action theory paradigm from a general viewpoint in sciences of culture. Then we specify this generic description by focusing on the joint action theory in didactics (JATD). We elaborate on three currently developed elements of the theory: the reticence-expression dialectics; the contract-milieu dialectics,…

Purpose: We aimed to study narrative skills in Mandarin-speaking children with language impairment (LI) to compare with children with LI speaking Indo-European languages. Method: Eighteen Mandarin-speaking children with LI (mean age 6;2 [years;months]) and 18 typically developing (TD) age controls told 3 stories elicited using the Mandarin…

Purpose: We investigated and compared the outcomes from two standardized, norm-referenced screening assessments of language (i.e., Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Preschool--Second Edition [CELFP-2], Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation--Screening Test [DELV-ST]) with African American preschoolers whose spoken dialect differed…

We examined language profiles of 2571 children, 30-68 months old, with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), other developmental disabilities (DD), and typical development from the general population (POP). Children were categorized as expressive dominant (ED), receptive dominant (RD), or nondominant (ND). Within each group, the ED profile was the least…

Background: The educational context in South Africa does not always support the development of bilingualism to enable the cognitive and social advantages of dual language proficiency. The emphasis on English as the language of instruction overlooks bilingual competence. This study attempts to show that by considering conceptual vocabulary,…