This study tested the effects of hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned French words on the pronunciation of these words by 7- to 8-year-old Catalan children. In a short training experiment with a pre- and posttest design, 28 children either repeated cognate words in French (e.g. French "aspirateur," Catalan "aspirador"…

Task modality (oral vs. writing) has been found to affect the production, nature and resolution of the language-related episodes (LREs) produced by adult learners in collaborative interaction, a finding also attested in very recent and still limited research with young learners, a population that deserves greater attention in the literature.…

This longitudinal study explores the effects of time and proficiency pairing on the amount and purpose of L1 use in task-based peer interaction by EFL primary school learners. Most of the studies available to date on L1 use in peer interaction involve adult learners, and we have little empirical evidence on the role played by the L1 in child peer…

Oral language abilities have been reported to be related to reading development. This relationship seems to be determined by orthographic systems and reading development. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) show reading difficulties, although most studies focus on reading comprehension. The present study has two main objectives: to…

Meta-syntheses have reported positive impacts of feedback for student achievement at different stages of education and have been influential in establishing feedback as an effective strategy to support student learning. However, these syntheses combine studies of a variety of different feedback approaches, combine studies where feedback is one of…

Learning to compose texts adequate for different purposes is crucial for becoming literate. We examined developmental changes in the rhetorical structure of written texts produced by Spanish children throughout the early years of elementary school in the light of descriptive writing purposes. Children had also performed tasks to test…

The advance of new hearing technologies has generated high expectations regarding the development and learning of deaf children, but little research has been done on the language levels of this generation of deaf learners who receive education at the same pace as their hearing peers. The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between…

A considerable body of research within the interaction framework (Long, 1996) has centred on the language-related episodes (LREs) which occur when learners topicalize a specific linguistic item while they are engaged in meaning-focused tasks. Several studies have shown that the production of LREs may be influenced by the proficiency level of the…

Building a text is a multidimensional endeavor. Writers must work simultaneously on the content of the text, its discursive organization, the structure of the sentences, and the individual words themselves. Knowledge of vocabulary is central to this endeavor. This study intends (1) to trace the development of writer's vocabulary depth, their…

During the Spanish Golden Age, language was developing fast. An important debate on orthology and orthography was taking place at the time. Many authors posed different proposals for a reform of spelling. The arguments discussed in these works also included educational considerations in favour of their proposals, which makes them an invaluable…

The aim of this paper is to analyse some aspects of development of Basque as a second language (L2) in children for whom Spanish is their first language (L1) who attended immersion school in Basque in a Spanish-speaking sociolinguistic context. Data consist of oral story retellings produced in a classroom setting where the same children…

Adjectives, like nouns and verbs, are one of the three major classes of lexical words. But, unlike nouns and verbs, they emerge late in acquisition. In Catalan, as in many other languages, their use is closely linked to the literate lexicon learned at school-age. Thus, the use of adjectives can be a good indicator of later language development.…

The aim of this paper is to provide new evidence on the effectiveness of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in the acquisition of English language competences (reading, writing, listening and spoken production and interaction) compared to traditional learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) in primary school settings. To do so,…

Broadly speaking, the teaching of spoken language in Spanish schools has not been approached in a systematic way. Changes in school practices are needed in order to allow all children to become competent speakers and to understand and construct oral texts that are appropriate in different contexts and for different audiences both inside and…

This longitudinal study examines the acquisition of subject pronouns in third language (L3) production. Participants were 90 Basque-Spanish bilingual students, learning English as a third language in a formal setting in the Basque Country. All the participants, who had received the same amount of exposure to English, were divided into three groups…