This article presents a cross-cultural comparison of the size and composition of the expressive vocabulary of young children speaking two dialectal varieties of South American Spanish. Ninety-one Peruvian and 91 Argentinian toddlers (mean age: 22.5 months), matched on gender, age and maternal education, were assessed through the respective…

This dissertation investigated how a bilingual's experiences can affect how their first language pronunciation can differ from monolingual speakers of their two languages. We used a methodology incorporating quantitative phonetic measurements of voice onset time and vowel formants, grammar and vocabulary tests, and qualitative measures of language…

This research analyzes data collected by the Young Lives project on childhood poverty. It addresses the effect of socio-demographic, individual, and linguistic variables -- focusing on the latter -- on reading comprehension in Spanish by 502 Peruvian Quechua-Spanish bilingual children aged 8 years. The regression model tested explained 46% of the…

This article presents a three-strand approach to help L2 writers in English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL) instructional contexts achieve greater cohesion in their written work. The approach focuses on (1) the analysis of authentic texts, (2) the development of productive vocabulary, and (3) information…

Many studies have shown that using music and songs while learning a new language can be of great benefit to students in aspects such as grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. However, the use of songs in class as motivation to learn English is a subject that has not been explored thoroughly. The purpose of this study is to explore how the use of…

Following the integration of an online homework tool -- MyEnglishLab (MEL) -- into their English courseware products, Pearson sought to explore how one of these products, Top Notch, was being implemented with MyEnglishLab and perceptions about the impact it was having on learning. Top Notch is a six-level communicative course that aims to help…

A read-aloud program focused on vocabulary and comprehension skills for children bilingual in Quechua and Spanish was evaluated for efficacy. The authors present a study with classrooms of first-grade students, suggesting that specific read-aloud strategies that target the use of background knowledge in a discussion-based format can be a…

The discussion of corpus planning for the Southern Quechua language variety of Peru examines issues of graphization, standardization, modernization, and renovation of Quechua in the face of increasing domination by the Spanish language. The efforts of three major groups of linguists and other scholars working on language planning in Peru, and the…