The Direct Method, a pedagogical approach for teaching additional languages through immersion, emphasizes oral interaction and everyday language usage to facilitate language acquisition. This method discourages reliance on translation and minimizes emphasis on grammatical rules. However, a fundamental question arises about the effectiveness of…

French Immersion instruction has often focused on the development of oral language as the primary method of early literacy learning. Manitoba Education endorses this focus with its curricular emphasis on oral language acquisition before formal reading and writing instruction. This article examines the role of early years French immersion teachers…

Oral language is foundational to literacy. Because their language is under construction, emergent bilingual students have unique needs related to literacy development regardless of the language of instruction. Knowledge teachers gain through formative assessment of student oral language can guide decisions about literacy instruction. The purpose…

Despite huge investments in interventions designed to support oral language skills in early childhood and beyond, many of the interventions fail to identify impacts on children's language learning. Programmes may have limited impact because they do not sufficiently succeed in supporting teachers' instructional talk, and thus, more efficiently…

Purpose: The purpose of this quantitative, causal-comparative study was to determine whether English learners who participated in transitional kindergarten perform equally or better than English learners who did not participate in transitional kindergarten in the areas of oral language, written language, and overall language as measured by the…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to examine the role that the 1st language, Spanish, at prekindergarten (pre-K) plays in predicting 2nd language (L2), English, word reading in 1st grade. In addition, it examines the role of conceptual vocabulary in predicting word reading in English. Method: As part of a longitudinal study of…

This study explored the development of oral narrative retell proficiency among Mandarin Chinese-English dual language immersion (DLI) learners in Utah. The study compared the younger and the older DLI learners' oral narrative retelling production in order to provide information regarding the Mandarin narrative developmental trend of the DLI…

This qualitative case study examined the interactions between four Mexican parents from immigrant backgrounds and their children during the process of creating two biliteracy family projects that centered on their experiential knowledge. Informed by a theoretical lens of sociocultural linguistics and community cultural wealth, this study examined…

This research employs a language ideologies framework to examine the language practices and beliefs of bilingual first grade students in an ESL classroom, in which the teacher valued and encouraged Spanish and translingual talk and writing. Using ethnographic methods of data collection and analysis, the findings pointed to the influence of both…

In this randomized trial study, the authors examined the efficacy of a practitioner partnership language intervention addressing oral language learning (expressive and receptive) in young language-minority learners from multiple-language groups in Norway. Resource teachers in 16 elementary schools implemented the intervention in the first and…

This pilot study evaluates the feasibility of an integrated intervention titled "Language and Literacy Together" developed to target semantic and narrative skills in bilingual children at risk for developmental language disorder (DLD). Thirteen first-grade bilingual children who scored in the risk range for DLD on the Bilingual English…

Background: Many South African children attend African language medium of instruction (MOI) schools, learn English as an additional language and switch to English MOI three years later. There is still much to be researched about how a child's first and second language literacy develops over time in South Africa. Aim: This study aims to outline the…

This qualitative study utilized sociocultural and heteroglossic perspectives to examine the oral translanguaging practices of four Korean-American first-graders in a Korean heritage language (HL) classroom. The research method was discourse analysis. The students attended all-English American schools during the school week and a Korean HL school…

Purpose: The study examined the contributions of Spanish and English oral narrative skills to English reading among 95 early elementary dual language learners (DLLs) from Spanish-speaking homes in the United States. This sample of first- and third-grade DLL children attended Spanish-English dual language immersion programs and received language…

Elementary French immersion (FI) language arts teachers often organize instruction around small learning groups. Students rotate through learning stations/centres and work independently with their peers on L2 literacy skills. This study examined how principles of task-based language teaching (TBLT) can be used and/or adapted to further support…