Although the teaching of children's oral language is critical to both their social development and academic success, the assessment of oral language development poses many challenges for classroom teachers. The aim of the study is to develop an approach that: (i) enables teachers to assess oral language in a reliable, valid and comparable manner…

Elicited imitation (EI), a short-cut measure of global proficiency in second language (L2) research, requires participants to listen to sentences and repeat them as closely as possible. To support instrument sharing and assessment of L2 proficiency for longitudinal and crosslinguistic research, we created a parallel form of an EI task (EIT) for L2…

This longitudinal study examined the role of oral proficiency on English reading comprehension, as measured with elicited narratives using a wordless picture book, "Frog Where are You?". The sample consisted 102 English language learners, including both Spanish and Cantonese speakers. Narrative samples were collected in the winter of…

This paper discusses a micro-study within an intervention project, conducted in four London primary schools, to enhance the spoken language skills of reception children. There were 60 children in each of the intervention and comparison groups. The focus here is to explore a classroom assessment of young children's oral narrative skills. Effective…

Background: The body of literature on narratives of bilingual children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) is growing. However, little is known about the narrative abilities of bilingual preschool children with SLI and their patterns of growth. Aims: To determine the similarities and differences in narrative abilities between…

This qualitative study explores the roles that undergraduate Spanish as a second language (L2) learners ascribe to their identities, backgrounds, sociocultural contexts, and imaginations in the development of their ideal second language (L2) selves (Dornyei 2009), rooted L2 selves (MacIntyre et al., 2017) and investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015;…

Although children with developmental language disorder demonstrate poor inferential comprehension, few studies have evaluated the effect of interventions to improve inferencing. This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of a small-group intervention designed to improve oral inferential comprehension of narrative discourse. Thirty-seven 5- to…

The production of a well-constructed narrative is the culmination of several years of language acquisition and is an important milestone in children's development. There is no current description of narrative development for Catalan speaking children. This study collected elicited narratives in Catalan from 118 children aged 4;0-10;11. Narratives…

This study aims to know the characteristics of mathematical communication of pre-service primary school teachers. The material used as the object of research is geometry. It requires the ability of algebra and spatial skills. The area of trapezoid is selected as the topic since it is perceived as the most complex of all plane shapes studied in…

Background: Knowledge of the discourse performance of non-brain-damaged individuals is critical not only for its differentiation from disordered expression but also for more accurate models of ageing and communication. The effect of ageing and cognitive skills on the cohesive adequacy of discourse has, until now, presented a confusing and…

Children's narrative skills have been widely studied in North America, but there is a paucity of African research. Within South Africa's diverse socio-cultural context, this study of mixed-race children explored the development of narrative production and the influence of home background variables. Using the Bear Story picture prompt, this…

Writing is an essential skill for academic success. Evidence shows students with writing difficulties experience lower overall academic performance (Graham & Perin, 2007). The development of fluent writing is particularly important, as it has been shown to be a strong predictor of global writing quality (Malecki & Jewell, 2003). Limited…

Purpose: As noted in this forum, more research is needed to support the work of school-based speech-language pathologists who are designing and implementing interventions for students with language disorders. This article presents the findings of a multiple-baseline, single-subject study that was conducted to assess the outcomes of an intervention…

Objects with difficult histories present profound opportunities for learning and teaching alike because of their authenticity, relatability and quite often their ability to inspire empathy. The following article constructs a multivalenced account of a student's vandalised violin by utilising a narrative framework to layer various perspectives into…

Background and aims: Narrative-based language intervention provides a naturalistic context for targeting overall story structure and specific syntactic goals in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Given the cognitive demands of narratives, narrative-based language intervention also has the potential to positively impact related…