Phonological awareness may be influenced by differences in the characteristics of the items studied. This hypothesis is considered particularly applicable to Arabic, which is a diglossic language. This study examined the impact of phonemic position and the affiliation of the items between spoken and standard languages on phonemic isolation tasks.…

This study examined the impact of the lexical distance (spoken, modern standard Arabic-MSA, shared, and pseudo-words) on phonological awareness (PA) and naming speed (RAN). The data from this longitudinal study were obtained from 261 native Arabic-speaking kindergarteners, which were then followed to first grade. The data revealed a significant…

Purpose: Effects related to literacy acquisition have been observed at different levels of speech processing. This study investigated the link between orthographic knowledge and children's perception and production of specific speech sounds. Method: Sixty Spanish-speaking second graders, differing in their phonological decoding skills, completed a…

Background: Literacy achievement of learners is a concern in many developing countries, particularly for English second language (EL2) learners with inadequate language development. It is important to investigate foundational phonological awareness (PA), as well as speech perception skills to guide the development of effective intervention for EL2…

Children are known to be fast learners due to their neural plasticity. Learning a non-native language (L2) requires the mastering of new production patterns. In classroom settings, learners are not only exposed to the acoustic input, but also to the unfamiliar grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the L2 orthography. We tested how 9-10-year-old…

This article reports a study examining whether foreign language (FL) word learning can be improved with reduction in cognitive load. Cognitive load theory has received substantial supports in various fields of learning but never in FL word learning. Due to the defined poverty in exposure to the FL, hence deprived cognitive pre-requisites for…

The following manuscript is a review of research surrounding best practices for language and literacy development in children birth to age three. Part 1 of the review begins with the research on language acquisition beginning in utero, continuing through infancy and onto the emergence of speech. The review discusses the importance of language…