Few adult second language (L2) learners successfully attain high-level proficiency. Although decades of research on beginning to intermediate stages of L2 learning have identified a number of predictors of the rate of acquisition, little research has examined factors relevant to predicting very high levels of L2 proficiency. The current study,…

Background: "Hurricane Katrina" devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast in August 2005. Intrusive re-experiencing is a common posttraumatic stress symptom. However, young children with limited introspection skills might have difficulties identifying their intrusive thoughts. Method: A sample of 165 5- to 9-year-old children were surveyed about their…

This paper reports a quantitative study on gender differences in attitudes when learning oral skills via technology. The study was conducted at Tafila Technical University, Jordan, with 70 female and 30 male students, to find out if female students are better and faster in learning a language than male. Specifically, it seeks to investigate…

The ubiquitous use of Internet-based mobile devices in educational contexts means that mobile learning has become a plausible alternative to or a good complement for conventional classroom-based teaching. However, there is a lack of research that explores and defines the characteristics and effects of mobile language learning (LL) through language…

In this paper we report the results from a study that assessed confidence together with scales measuring self-belief--i.e., self-efficacy, different kinds of self-concepts, and anxiety--among the 15-year old students from Singapore. A distinct confidence factor was identified in the domains of mathematics (N = 1940) and English (N = 1786). Our…

Relations between mothers' tendency to comment appropriately on their 8-month-olds' internal states (mind-mindedness) and children's behavioral difficulties (Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire) at ages 44 and 61 months were investigated in a socially diverse sample (N = 171, 88 boys). Controlling for maternal depressive symptoms, perceived…

In addition to providing an account of the empirical facts of language, a theory that aspires to account for language as a biologically based human faculty should seek a graceful integration of linguistic phenomena with what is known about other human cognitive capacities and about the character of brain computation. The present discussion note…

The presence or absence of clinically delayed language development prior to 3 years of age is a key, but contentious, clinical feature distinguishing autism from Asperger's disorder. The aim of this study was to examine language processing in children with high-functioning autism (HFA) and Asperger's disorder (AD) using a task which taps lexical…

Previous studies show that deaf children have deficits in false belief understanding due to their language impairment. However, it is not clear whether deaf adults still have problems in advanced theory of mind (ToM). The present study examined deaf adults' performance on three aspects of advanced ToM. All of the deaf groups lacking mental state…

In the study reported here, we explored writing processes employed by 70 undergraduate learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) through questionnaires and think-aloud protocols. Then we looked for possible differences in the writing processes employed by high- and low-aptitude learners. We observed that learners with higher aptitude scores…

The central question in this study is whether the language and math delays of the different socio-economic and ethnic minority groups targeted by Dutch educational disadvantage policy have diminished or not. Data are from the years 1995, 1999, 2003 and 2008. Information from a total of 90,000 pupils in Grades 2 and 8 was selected to represent the…

When two or more languages are part of a child's world, we are presented with a rich opportunity to learn something about language in general and about how the mind works. In this book, Norbert Francis examines the development of bilingual proficiency and the different kinds of competence that come together in making up its component parts. In…

The dynamics of the communicative discourse is a natural process that requires an application of a wide range of skills and strategies. In particular, linguistic discourse and the interaction process have a huge impact on promoting literacy and academic skills in all students especially English language learners (ELLs). Using interactive…

Background: Children with poor language abilities tend to perform poorly on verbal working memory tasks. This result has been interpreted as evidence that limitations in working memory capacity may interfere with the development of a mature linguistic system. However, it is possible that language abilities, such as the efficiency of sentence…

In the present study, we examine the roles of 1) explicit information about language provided to learners prior to treatment and 2) aptitude (specifically grammatical sensitivity) within Processing Instruction. Forty-two learners of Spanish in their third-semester of study were divided into two groups: those who received explicit information (EI)…