This study investigated the effect of preschool-wide, teacher-implemented, phoneme-focused phonological awareness (PA) and letter-sound knowledge (LSK) instruction, on raising code-based school-entry reading readiness for children with Spoken Language Difficulties (SLD) and Typical Development (TD), when supported by weekly coaching by trainee…

Metalinguistic awareness (MLA) is a predictor of adult foreign language (FL) learning in instructed settings. Following Bialystok and Ryan (1985) two-component model of MLA, we distinguish ML analysis as the ability to compare and select language items from ML control as the ability to detect and manipulate rule-based linguistic patterns. So far,…

This study aimed to explore the types of pronunciation errors that student interpreters make in pronouncing foreign Proper Nouns during English-Arabic and Arabic-English Liaison Interpreting, the pronunciation error strategies that students utilize when they encounter unfamiliar Proper Nouns in media discourse, and the factors that affect…

Research Findings: The study investigated whether preschool code-related home literacy experiences had direct associations with regular and irregular word reading in the first year of primary school as well as exploring whether there were indirect associations between these experiences and later word reading via children's language skills or…

Instruction in second language (L2) English phoneme pronunciation almost invariably includes a focus on improving the learners' use of their articulatory organs to pronounce the relevant sounds. However, the pronunciation of many English sounds also relies on effort from the abdominal region, and under-utilization of this region can often…

The purpose of this study was to identify the types of early reading tasks with which final year (5-6 year olds) Jamaican basic school children are struggling that place them at-risk for reading difficulties. A sample of 409 (224 females, 185 males) children in the final year of basic school were tested using measures of language development,…

Deaf people use Sign Language (SL) for intellectual development, communications and other human activities that are mediated by language--such as the expression of complex and abstract thoughts and feelings; and for literature, culture and knowledge. The Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) is a complete linguistic system of visual-spatial manner,…

The purpose of this study was to reveal prospective Turkish Language teachers' views on the primary level Reading and Writing course they take at university. Employing the qualitative research method, data were collected from participants by administering a semi-structured interview form with six openended questions that was prepared and…

Background: We examined the component skills of reading comprehension (i.e., letter sound knowledge, syllable reading fluency, decoding fluency, text or oral reading fluency and listening comprehension) and their structural relations using data from three sub-Saharan African languages with transparent orthographies in a multilingual context.…

Background: We examined the component skills of reading comprehension (i.e., letter sound knowledge, syllable reading fluency, decoding fluency, text or oral reading fluency and listening comprehension) and their structural relations using data from three sub-Saharan African languages with transparent orthographies in a multilingual context.…

The present study explored whether the phonological bias favoring consonants found in French-learning infants and children when learning new words (Havy & Nazzi, 2009; Nazzi, 2005) is language-general, as proposed by Nespor, Peña and Mehler (2003), or varies across languages, perhaps as a function of the phonological or lexical properties of…

Although toddlers in their 2nd year of life generally have phonologically detailed representations of words, a consistent lack of sensitivity to certain kinds of phonological changes has been reported. The origin of these insensitivities is poorly understood, and uncovering their cause is crucial for obtaining a complete picture of early…

To expand our understanding of script-general and script-specific principles in the learning of letter names, we examined how three characteristics of alphabet letters -- their frequency in printed materials, order in the alphabet, and visual similarity to other letters -- relate to children's letter-name knowledge in four languages with three…

This study examined low-proficiency Iranian EFL students' affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement with oral corrective feedback (OCF) on interdental fricative errors: /?/and/ð/. The data were collected from 27 learners with favorable and unfavorable perceptions about OCF. After receiving OCF on 30 tested and 30 untested lexical items in…

Building up on Munro and Derwing, the current study set out to re-examine and generalize the Functional Load (FL) principle (Brown, 1988) as a tool to identify a set of relatively crucial segmental features for successful understanding in L2 communication. In Experiment 1, 40 Japanese learners of English in English-as-Foreign-Language settings…