English is one of the most important second languages in nonnative English-speaking countries, where learning English usually begins in primary school. To this end, vocabulary learning is regarded as the most fundamental and crucial stage in developing the student's English language capability. While some studies have explored strategies of…

The Report of the National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) identified five key elements that were critical to the development of reading, and these have been widely accepted by educational jurisdictions as providing definitive guidelines for early reading instruction. This paper presents a case for the inclusion of oral language and early literacy…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among oral language, decoding, and reading comprehension for children with autism. Participants included 13 English-speaking children with a diagnosis of high-functioning autism (IQ > 70) who were included in a typical classroom, and who had parents who spoke English. Parts of the…

Purpose: This study examined dimensions of written composition by using multiple evaluative approaches such as an adapted 6 + 1 trait scoring, syntactic complexity measures, and productivity measures. It further examined unique relations of oral language and literacy skills to the identified dimensions of written composition. Method: A large…

In an effort to understand cognitive foundations of oral language comprehension (i.e., listening comprehension), we examined how inhibitory control, theory of mind, and comprehension monitoring are uniquely related to listening comprehension over and above vocabulary and age. A total of 156 children in kindergarten and first grade from…

In the present study, we examined the influence of kindergarten component skills on writing outcomes, both concurrently and longitudinally to first grade. Using data from 265 students, we investigated a model of writing development including attention regulation along with students' reading, spelling, handwriting fluency, and oral language…

The new writing standards outlined in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are ambitious. Meeting these new demands will be challenging for all students, but even more so for English Learners (ELs) who are simultaneously developing language proficiency while learning to write in new genres. Teacher feedback is widely accepted to be a potentially…

The main objective of this study was to identify 6th to 11th grade students' beliefs about their English class in a public institution in Armenia, Colombia. By means of interviews, drawings, and focus groups with 30 students, four beliefs were established. It was found that students' beliefs are attached to the experiences they have lived in their…

Research on child English as a second language (ESL) learners has shown the benefits of task-based interaction for the use of different negotiation of meaning (NoM) strategies, which have been claimed to lead to second language learning. However, research on child interaction in foreign language settings is scarce, specifically research on a new…

This study was an attempt to investigate the relationships among Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and speaking complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) among Iranian EFL learners. To fulfill the purpose of this study, the teachers and parents of 593 male students were given the Farsi version of the CSI-4 ADHD diagnostic…

Among the academic challenges faced by students from low-socioeconomic status (SES) homes is the loss of academic skills during the summer months. A total of 22 elementary students from low-SES homes participated in a summer program designed to improve oral and written narrative skills. We gathered oral and written narrative samples at the…

Comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading, but it is a very complex task consisting of multiple component skills. A number of studies have tested the simple view of reading (SVR; Gough & Tunmer, 1986) in opaque languages, but few investigations of the SVR components have been conducted on transparent languages. In the present study, we…

A small number of studies show that music training is associated with improvements in reading or in its component skills. A central question underlying this present research is whether musical activity can enhance the acquisition of reading skill, potentially before formal reading instruction begins. We explored two dimensions of this question: an…

A qualitative think-aloud study, informed by social literacies and holistic bilingual perspectives, was conducted to examine how six emergent bilingual, Mexican American, fourth graders approached, interacted with, and comprehended narrative and expository texts in Spanish and English. The children had strong Spanish reading test scores, but…

Children's narrative skills have been widely studied in North America, but there is a paucity of African research. Within South Africa's diverse socio-cultural context, this study of mixed-race children explored the development of narrative production and the influence of home background variables. Using the Bear Story picture prompt, this…