The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between receptive and expressive language skills characterized by the performance of nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English in the academic context. Test scores of 585 adult NNSs were selected from Form 2 of the Pearson Test of English Academic's field-test database. A correlated…

Learning a new language is akin to exploring an unknown land as ambiguous situations are prevalent in language learning. Ambiguity tolerance, which can hinder or facilitate language learning, is considered as an important learning style. The purpose of the present study was to understand how tolerant/intolerant EFL learners are of foreign language…

Placement and screening tests serve important functions, not only with regard to placing learners at appropriate levels of language courses but also with a view to maximizing the effectiveness of administering test batteries. We examined two widely reported formats suitable for these purposes, the discrete decontextualized Yes/No vocabulary test…

This article reports on the outcomes of a longitudinal case study to gauge the impact of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) on two of the least researched language skills: oral comprehension and production. It worked with 24 students in the fourth grade of Compulsory Secondary Education in a public school in Andalusia (southern Spain)…

This article reports on a quasi-experimental study investigating the effectiveness of two different teaching approaches, explicit teaching and explicit teaching combined with textual and aural input enhancement used to teach lexical items to elementary level learners of Turkish in a higher education context. Forty participants were divided into…

Using a nationally representative sample of dual language learners (DLLs) attending Head Start, this study investigated how the language used for instruction and the proportion of DLLs in the class was associated with English and Spanish receptive vocabulary development between the fall and spring (n = 531). Based on teacher report of the language…

Human cognitive competence represents individuals' subconscious knowledge of abilities, talents, and mental skills collectively called "multiple intelligences (MIs)", which play a pivotal role in facilitating human learning. Thus, the main objective of the present study was to determine the magnitude of the relationship existing between…

Validated under a Rasch framework (Beglar, 2010), the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) (Nation & Beglar, 2007) is an increasingly popular measure of decontextualized written receptive vocabulary size in the field of second language acquisition. However, although the validation indicates that the test has high internal reliability, still unaddressed…

Some reports suggest that there is an increase in the number of children identified as having developmental language impairment (Bercow, 2008). yet resource issues have meant that many speech and language therapy services have compromised provision in some way. Thus, efficient ways of identifying need and prioritizing intervention are required.…

Although self-assessment of foreign language skills is not a new topic, it has not yet been widely explored in the Turkish English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. The current study investigates the potential of self-assessment of foreign language skills in determining proficiency levels of Turkish learners of EFL: 239 learners participated in…

The input factors that may cause variation in bilingual proficiency were investigated in 38 French-English bilinguals aged six to eight, of middle-to-high socio-economic status, attending an international state school in France. Data on children's current and cumulative language exposure and family background were collected through questionnaires…

This paper aims to understand the relationship between context and agency in the context of a South Korean high school teacher's English classroom pedagogy. This was explored through two semi-structured interviews with the teacher, which was transcribed and analyzed using the principles of grounded theory in order to obtain a bottom-up,…

This research investigated the influence of parental practices on helpless behaviors of struggling readers during homework tasks. Parents (N = 36) of elementary students reported on their children's helpless behaviors, such as task avoidance and negative affect, during homework assignments, and on the nature and frequency of their support.…

The study investigated morphosyntactic abilities and semantic-pragmatic competence in 24 children with developmental dyslexia aged 7-12 years. Morphosyntactic abilities were investgated in a direct object clitic production task, semantic-pragmatic competence in a quantifier comprehension task. Children with dyslexia produced fewer clitics than…

Background: Children with language impairment (LI) show heterogeneity in development. We tracked children from pre-school to middle childhood to characterize three developmental trajectories: resolving, persisting and emerging LI. Methods: We analyzed data from children identified as having preschool LI, or being at family risk of dyslexia,…