It is well known that information from spoken language is integrated into reading processes, but the nature of these links and how they are acquired is less well understood. Recent evidence has suggested that predictions about the written form of newly learned spoken words are already generated prior to print exposure. We extend this work to…

Although "VCE English Language (EL)" has been offered for twenty years in Victoria, Australia, the subject, and especially students' experience of it, has had little evaluation. Using data from four surveys conducted across seven years with over 1500 Unit 3-4 "EL" students, augmented by VCAA enrolment data, a profile of…

This study aimed to profile the sublexical, lexical, and text level language skills, and cognitive processes of a sub-group of children with poor reading comprehension known as poor comprehenders. An assessment protocol was developed to assess each of the components from Perfetti and Stafura's Reading Systems Framework. A comprehensive profile was…

This paper examines the usage frequency of phonetically reduced modals (i.e. "gonna," "wanna," "gotta") in Present-day English. It is assumed that in distinct sociolinguistic and discourse contexts, the use of reduced modals is dynamic. To collect the data, there are five corpora used in this study, "Corpus of…

Chinese is not only a tonal but also a visual language represented by tens of thousands of characters which are pictographic in nature. This presents a great challenge to learners whose mother tongue is alphabetical-based such as English. To assist English-speaking background learners to learn Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) well, a good…

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…

This report presents the "English Language Proficiency" (ELP) and Employability Framework", which has been designed to inform and support higher education institutions' (HEIs) policies and practices on ELP and graduate employability. The "Framework" was developed through a review of the national and international…

The purpose of this study was to explore the connections between young children's oral language vocabulary and children's reading of written language in beginning reading books. Oral language has been viewed as the foundation for emergent reading development as it provides the semantic base, syntactic base and phonological base for successfully…

In this paper I argue that an understanding of the role of language and literacy in learning disciplinary content should be a key component of the pedagogical content knowledge covered in the preparation of high school teachers. I identify three components of this "literacy pedagogical content knowledge" (LPCK): knowledge about how…

Discusses the issue of the use of signed language dictionaries in the standardization of signed languages with reference to the Australian Sign language (Auslan) dictionaries. Details the structure of the Auslan dictionaries and argues that bilingual, bidirectional dictionaries of this type must be produced if communities are to encourage language…

The relationship of systemic functional linguistic theory to the following themes is examined: differences between speech and writing; written genres; and the study of spoken language, especially for its relevance in school learning. (65 references) (LB)

While there has been much interest in the differences between oral and written language styles, studies have focused on the relative use of certain features. Little attention has been paid to the cultural value given to language style in languages with a literary tradition versus value given to style in those with a non-literary traditions. All…

This article reports some outcomes from an exploratory study that compares children diagnosed with ADHD and without language impairment with typically developing children for aspects of language use. Discourse analysis based on a systemic functional linguistics approach is applied to spoken and written samples from three different text types that…

This paper focuses on an information gap task that was part of a larger critical action research project that sought to expand talk opportunities for children in multilingual classrooms. Little of the previous research on tasks and language learning has focused on children learning English as an additional language in the context of diverse,…

A study investigated the effects of the language used in the school environment on girls' perspectives on femininity. Subjects were aged 4-11, and were the only girls in a small rural Australian school. Data were gathered by analysis of spoken and written language used in the classroom. Analysis focused on relationships and socialization as…