This study, framed by the component model of reading (CMR), examined the relative importance of kindergarten-entry predictors of first grade reading performance. Specifically, elements within the ecological domain included dialect, maternal education, amount of preschool, and home literacy; elements within the psychological domain included teacher-reported academic competence, social skills, an...

: This study aims to explore the relationship between syntactic and lexical complexity and also the relationship between different aspects of lexical complexity. To this end, speech monologs of 35 Iranian high-intermediate learners of English on three different tasks (i.e. argumentation, description, and narration) were analyzed for correlations between one measure of sy...

It has been hypothesized that some aspects of a second language (L2) might be learned easier than others if a language is learned late. On the other hand, non-use might result in a loss of language skills in one's native, i.e. one's first language (L1) (language attrition). To study which, if any, aspects of language are affected by either late acquisition or non-use, long-term German immigrant...

The present study investigated the contribution of executive functions to narrative writing in fourth grade children, and evaluated to what extent executive functions contribute differentially to different levels of narrative composition. The written skills of 102 Dutch children in fourth grade were assessed using a narrative picture-elicitation task. In addition, a large test battery assessing...

We investigated the hypothesis that two well-studied brain systems (see Feinberg & Farah, 1997) underlie the lexicon/grammar dichotomy (Ullman et al., 1997). In this view, frontal/basal-ganglia circuitry implicated in the learning and expression of motor and cognitive skills also underlie the acquisition and use of grammatical rules, and temporal-lobe circuits implicated in the learning and use...

The present study investigated the effect of different types of text simplification (i.e., reducing the lexical and syntactic complexity of texts) on reading comprehension of English as a Foreign Language learners (EFL). Sixty female intermediate EFL learners from three intact classes in Tabarestan Language Institute in Tehran participated in the study. The intact classes were assigned to three...

Abstract Previous studies have indicated that students’ writing skills benefit from contextualized L1 grammar teaching, in which language structures are observed and analyzed authentic texts as embedded into teaching of reading writing. The approach is also promoted by the current Finnish curriculum for basic education. This study investigates relationship between grammatical understanding usin...