In the 21st century, oral communication skills are increasingly important for business graduates who will start their careers. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to discover the best method to help business students enhance their oral communication skills during their college years. This research also helps professors to make their…

Elementary students in grade two make sense of science ideas and knowledge through their contextual experiences. Mattis Lundin and Britt Jakobson find in their research that early grade students have sophisticated understandings of human anatomy and physiology. In order to understand what students' know about human body and various systems,…

This article offers an extended definition of prosody by examining the role of prosody in the production and comprehension of L2 spoken language from mainly a cognitive, interactionalist perspective. It reviews theoretical and empirical L1 and L2 research that have examined and explored the relationships between prosodic forms and their functions…

If teachers of Less-Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs), such as Irish, are to make use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and many other CALL tools, then there must be an appropriate adaptation of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) in that LCTL. The need to be "Bologna-compliant" has seen language courses and syllabuses…

This book presents the most effective instructional strategies for promoting vocabulary growth in the early grades, when the interdependence of word learning and oral language development is especially strong. The authors guide teachers in choosing the best materials and in fostering home-school connections, and share six key principles for…

Literacy is increasingly essential for Americans' health, economic well-being, civic engagement, access to higher education, and social participation. Rapid growth in technology and globalization have increased demand for both universal literacy and higher levels of literacy than in the recent past. Yet national and international assessments…

The population of Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the United States continues to increase and there is a significant need to develop psychometrically sound early language and literacy screening measures to accurately capture children's ability in Spanish. In this paper, we describe the innovative design and calibration process of the new…

This study investigates the effects of instruction on learners' pragmatic competence by integrating pragmatic consciousness-raising (PCR) activities into a beginning-level Chinese language course during one academic semester. The study also examines the effect of integrating the PCR activities, i.e., before or after the instruction of a…

Supporting children's oral language development during the preschool years is critical for later reading success. Research shows that preschool teachers may be missing opportunities to engage children in the kinds of conversations that foster the development of rich oral language skills. Teachers hoping to support these skills can provide children…

The article reports on a study investigating the comparative effects of immediate and delayed corrective feedback in learning the English past passive construction, a linguistic structure of which the learners had little prior knowledge. A total of 120 learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) from 4 intact classes at a Chinese middle school…

Task repetition facilitates learners' performance, at least temporarily: Since learners are already familiar with the content of the task at the initial enactment, they are capable of focusing their attention on linguistic form during the following enactment. However, the analysis in previous studies treated various aspects of "form" as…

Theories of writing development posit several component skills as necessary to the writing process. This meta-analysis synthesizes the literature on the correlation between these proposed component skills and writing outcomes. Specifically, in this study, we examine the bivariate relationships between handwriting fluency, spelling, reading, and…

This project investigated vocabulary learning from a sociocultural perspective--in particular, the way in which lexical knowledge was mediated in Spanish second language (L2) learners' and native speakers' (NSs') interactions. Nine students who were enrolled in an advanced conversation course completed an oral portfolio assignment consisting of…

The current study aimed at investigating how mobile seamless technology can be used to enhance the pragmatic competence of learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL). 34 overseas CSL learners participated in this study. They were randomly assigned into two groups: the classroom group, executing language tasks in fake contexts in a traditional…

This study reports the results of an action-based study conducted in an EFL class to examine whether digital video recordings would contribute to the enhancement of EFL learners' oral fluency skills. It also investigates the learners' perceptions of the use of digital video recordings in a speaking class. 10 Turkish EFL learners participated in…