This study examines the longer term effectiveness of a standard protocol, Tier 2 supplemental vocabulary intervention for kindergarten English learners, designed to develop root word vocabulary knowledge and reinforce beginning word reading skills. Participating students in the original study ("n" = 93 treatment, 92 control) received 20…

We examined whether inserting spaces between words in Chinese text would help children learn to read new vocabulary. We recorded adults' and 7- to 10-year-old children's eye movements as they read new 2-character words, each embedded in four explanatory sentences (the learning session). Participants were divided into learning subgroups--half read…

Twenty 10- to 18-year-old children and adolescents with varying degrees of hearing impairment (HI) and hearing aids (HA), ranging from mild-moderate to severe, produced picture-elicited narratives in a spoken and written version. Their performance was compared to that of 63 normally hearing (NH) peers within the same age span. The participants…

Working memory (WM) as the ability to temporarily maintain and manipulate various kinds of information is known to be affected by proactive interference (PI) from previously relevant contents, but studies on developmental changes in the susceptibility to PI are scarce. In the present study, we investigated life span development of item-specific…

This study investigated the effects of intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, classroom engagement and extrinsic motivation on reading development among youth. Using a nationally representative sample of students in the US, the researchers followed students longitudinally from fifth to eighth grade. Reading achievement was measured using…

Descriptive analyses: Approximately one-third of the nearly 7,500 utterances spoken by teachers were comments. Differences in the use of instructional strategies and content emerged in relation to curriculum condition. In contrast to the variability between teachers, little within-teacher variability was observed. On average, teachers used only…

The purpose of this case study was to determine to what extent e-readers affected struggling readers as a part of reading instruction at the middle school level to improve students' literacy skills of comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary, and to show how e-readers affected engagement and self-efficacy of struggling readers to read and use…

The authors report data from a longitudinal study of the reading development of children who were assessed in the years of their 8th, 11th, 14th, and 16th birthdays. They examine the evidence for Matthew effects in reading and vocabulary between ages 8 and 11 in groups of children identified with good and poor reading comprehension at 8 years.…

With the mention of "sustainability" and "recycling," most people think about reusing paper, plastic, metal, and glass, but what the authors discovered when they embarked on a word-study unit is that the sustainability movement has also brought about the recycling of words. The authors were team-teaching a language awareness class taken by…

This study compares the language learner and test-taking strategies used by Chinese-speaking graduate students when confronted with familiar versus unfamiliar topics in an English multiple-choice format reading comprehension test. Thirty-six participants at a large mid-western university performed three tasks: A content knowledge vocabulary…

Children from different backgrounds have disparate access to cultural capital, which may influence their academic success. The purpose of this study was to examine the links between family background, home literacy experiences, and emergent literacy skills among preschoolers enrolled in Head Start programmes. The background characteristics studied…

This study compares two approaches to grammatical knowledge in language assessment: the structural view that regards grammatical knowledge as vocabulary and syntax (Bachman 1990), and the communicative view that perceives it as the binary combination of grammatical form and meaning (Purpura 2004). 1,491 second-year nursing students from eight…

This study looks into the use of reiteration relations in EFL student writing. The aim is to determine the extent to which Moroccan college students rely on lexical cohesion to produce native-sounding texts. Twenty essays written by college students from two different levels were analyzed quantitatively using Halliday and Hasan's (1976) and Hoey's…

Reading strategy use has long been considered an important factor in the evaluation of effective second language (L2) reading. It is generally believed that proficient and less-proficient readers differ in their reading process and strategy use. The purpose of this study was to examine the reading strategy use of high- and low-proficiency level…

In recent years, educators have become ever more aware of the critical role that vocabulary knowledge plays in the academic lives of their students. Vocabulary knowledge is fundamental to the comprehension of text and is most effective when it relates new words to students' existing vocabulary and background knowledge. Effective vocabulary…