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…

In multilingual sub-Saharan African countries, many children attend school and learn to read in a language that they do not speak at home. This mismatch between home and school language may contribute to poor learning outcomes, including low literacy rates. Bilingual education that includes a local language of instruction has become more prevalent…

By the end of primary school, students are confronted with expository texts known for their high proportion of domain-specific academic vocabulary words. These words usually comprise Greek or Latin roots in their internal structure. Recent findings showed that knowledge of Greek and Latin roots is related to reading comprehension. However, no…

One of the thorniest aspects of teaching languages is developing students' vocabulary, yet it is impossible to be "an accurate and highly communicative language user with a very small vocabulary" (Milton, 2009, p. 3). Nation (2006) indicates that more vocabulary than previously thought is required to function well both at spoken and…

Our aim was to investigate whether developing language system, as measured by a priming task for spoken words, is organized by semantic categories. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a priming task for spoken words in 18- and 24-month-old monolingual French learning children. Spoken word pairs were either semantically related…

This study examines whether the production of words with two phonological variants involves single or multiple lexical phonological representations. Three production experiments investigated the roles of the relative frequencies of the two pronunciation variants of French words with schwa: the schwa variant and the reduced variant. In two naming…

This article reports on the design and use of a profiler for lexical sophistication (i.e., use of advanced vocabulary), which was created to assess the lexical richness of intermediate and advanced Swedish second language (L2) learners' French and Italian. It discusses how teachers' judgments (TJs) of word difficulty can contribute to the…

The past 20 years have witnessed enormous growth in a diverse array of studies which explore the linguistic impact of study abroad (SA) experiences. During this period a multitude of research projects have investigated SLA/L2 learning in SA, in a number of different languages (Russian, Japanese, French, Spanish, English), utilizing diverse…

This study reports on the design and testing of an integrated suite of vocabulary training games for Nintendo[TM] collectively designated "My Word Coach" (Ubisoft, 2008). The games' design is based on a wide range of learning research, from classic studies on recycling patterns to frequency studies of modern corpora. Its general usage…

In this study, we examined the influence of child gender and sociocultural (SCL) factors in language production. Subjects were French Parisian children in nine age groups (24, 27, 30, 33, 36, 39, 42, 45 and 48 months). A total of 316 language samples were recorded during a 20-min standardized play session. Measures of grammatical and lexical…

This article reports research into the development of vocabulary in lower-intermediate level learners of French as a foreign language in Year 12 in 20 schools in the south of England. The focus of attention is the role of less common, or non-basic, vocabulary at a stage in students' learning when they have just moved to a much more advanced…

Vocabulary is one of the building blocks of language and is a necessary component of learners' development. This paper aims to describe the development of the L2 lexicon from the first year of learning French as a foreign language at school to the last year of undergraduate studies at university by setting out what learners know and how this…

There is more to the process of paraphrasing than simple transliteration. A variety of paraphrase types exist, each using a different strategy and requiring a different interpretive approach. (MSE)

Criticizes the circumstance that limits the opportunity for students to speak French in casual conversation to an extent that would permit them to truly improve their command of the language. The article maintains that giving students the opportunity to develop on their own the ability to express themselves orally is a valuable teaching goal.…

In an activity for the French classroom, teams of four student pairs read and summarize newspaper and magazine articles, extract a vocabulary list, prepare content questions, and become experts on portions of the text for a small-group discussion game. Changing partners and solo presentation are important features of the exercise. (MSE)