Purpose: Oral narrative, or storytelling, skills may constitute a linguistic strength for African American children, with implications for academic and social well-being. Despite this possibility, few studies have examined individual differences in oral narrative skill among African American children. To address this gap in the literature, this…

Linguistic alignment--the contingent reuse of our interlocutors' language at all levels of linguistic structure--pervades human dialogue. Here, we design unique measures to capture the degree of linguistic alignment between interlocutors' linguistic representations at three levels of structure: lexical, syntactic, and semantic. We track these…

General measures of process quality are widely used in the early childhood education (ECE) field. However, the evidence regarding associations between the most widely used process quality measure, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta et al., 2008), and children's school readiness gains during the preschool year is mixed. Using…

Assessing English learners (ELs) in US schools is challenging because many widely used assessments have not been designed with ELs in mind. Yet if teachers are sensitive to how ELs may perform differently from native speakers on such assessments, these assessments reveal useful information about ELs' language and literacy skills. This mixed-method…

Recent studies demonstrate that emerging literacy depends on earlier language achievement. Importantly, most extant work focuses on "parent-reported production" prior to 30 months of age. Of interest is whether and how "directly assessed vocabulary comprehension" in the 2nd year of life supports vocabulary and kindergarten…

In vocabulary testing, whether to adopt context is a heat-debated topic. In the article, an experiment is designed to investigate what is the effect of zero context and sentence context on the vocabulary testing? And how do the different kinds of context in vocabulary affect the subjects' performance? The experimental result demonstrates that…

Discusses the role of the lexicographer in assisting the translator and the technical writer and in vocabulary control. (AM)

This bibliography is the fifth edition of a work which lists published materials and unpublished theses and dissertations in vocabulary studies. Works included span the period from 1874 through December 1972. Sicty-nine categories are classified in three broad subject areas: acquisition and development, instructional materials, and research.…

Word identification involves many possible strategies in order for the reader to familiarize himself with vocabulary to gain meaning. One strategy is the development of sight vocabulary; another is phonetic analysis, which includes sound-symbol correspondence, syllabication, and accent; and a final strategy is structural analysis, which includes…

Elaborates on the conjecture that the words used in speech and writing have a powerful effect on perceptions of what is said and written. Reviews three distinct goals of instruction that are designed to promote students' expressive vocabularies. Suggests approaches for promoting students' active use of words. (ML)

Presents a method for teaching Greek and Latin work forms to promote comprehensive knowledge and improve retention. A self-study text is used in the class (meeting one-hour weekly), with students responsible for teaching creative games which utilize the scientific vocabulary. (JM)

This learning module is intended to improve the spelling, reading, and writing skills of health care industry employees by enhancing their word usage skills. The module, which is designed to be presented in a 32-hour course of eight 2-hour biweekly sessions, is divided into two parts. The initial part emphasizes the development of new learning…

This paper deals with the vocabulary problems encountered by advanced ESL students. While beginning and intermediate texts tend to control vocabulary and adapt reading selections to the learner, advanced students are usually forced to confront unabridged texts. Reading is a way to increase vocabulary, but a lack of vocabulary makes the reading…

An English for Special Purposes (ESP) course being developed aims to give the students a series of techniques to help them handle vocabulary in a text, and teach them strategies for identifying meaning in context. Traditional strategies, such as the study of morphology, use of grammatical information, and exercises in dictionary usage, are…