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Background: Spelling acquisition requires the assimilation of the regularities of the writing system, but these regularities may differ between the native and a foreign language. English spelling acquisition is a challenge for Spanish-speaking children due to differences in the orthographic systems. The aim of this study was to examine to what extent Spanish-speaking children use sub-lexical and lexical information when spelling in English as a foreign language (EFL), and whether this varies across grades. Methods: To achieve this, we administered a spelling-to-dictation task of monosyllabic words to children 9 to 11 years old. Spelling accuracy, written latencies, and writing durations were analysed as a function of phonology-to-orthography consistency, lexical frequency, word length, and the semantic knowledge that the children have of the words. Results: Results showed differences between grades, with word length only influencing younger children. Lexical frequency, consistency, and semantic knowledge facilitated performance in older children. The cumulative exposure to English may lead to an improvement in spelling due to vocabulary growth and increased sensitivity to new spelling patterns and regularities. Such development occurs despite differences between the orthographies of the native and foreign language and even in the absence of explicit instruction in EFL spelling. Conclusions: Semantic information about words helps spelling retrieval during writing in EFL. Spanish-speaking children develop sensitivity to English orthography and spelling patterns, evident in the older group of children.

The present study presents an instructional procedure developed in an attempt to enhance incidental learning through graded readers in class, the Multiple Incidental Exposures (MIE) procedure, and compares it to a more common procedure involving reading and doing the exercises, which is referred to as Traditional Explicit Practice (TEP). Participants were 44 Catalan/Spanish students (aged 10-11 years) taking the fifth course of primary education in a school in Catalonia. Participants belonged to two intact classes that were randomly assigned a condition: MIE group (n = 23, n = 15 males, n = 8 females) and the TEP group (n = 21, n = 12 males, n = 9 females). The MIE group was first told the story by their teacher, then read and listened to the graded readers twice (first collectively and later on individually), to be followed by a True/False activity and a jigsaw reading task. The TEP group read and listened to the story collectively once and then performed a series of traditional explicit exercises very similar in format to those included at the end of the graded reader. Participants were administered a vocabulary test, a grammar test and a perception of pronunciation test following a pre- post-test design. A questionnaire on the participants' attitudes was also administered on the post-test. The results show that while the TEP procedure is more effective for grammar learning, the MIE and TEP procedures are equally effective in terms of vocabulary and pronunciation. In terms of enjoyment and perception of learning, both groups showed comparable results.

The acquisition of vocabulary and narrative comprehension are key abilities for children's literacy development and to potentiate cognitive and academic skills from early ages. The aim with this study was to analyse the effects of a 6-week integrated active-lessons programme based on playful games, vocabulary, and narrative comprehension. Ninety-two preschool children (45.7% girls) aged 35.83 ± 2.57 months were split into experimental and control groups. Results from the pre- and post-intervention assessments show improvements of 56.1% in vocabulary (p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.759) and 24.7% in narrative comprehension (p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.710) in the treatment group. The results do not vary based on gender or age (31-36 and 37-42 months). Active lessons based on playful games within the classroom are suggested as support for the acquisition of vocabulary and narrative comprehension in childhood education.

Oral language abilities have been reported to be related to reading development. This relationship seems to be determined by orthographic systems and reading development. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) show reading difficulties, although most studies focus on reading comprehension. The present study has two main objectives: to examine the reading performance of a group of Spanish-speaking children with DLD compared to a chronologically age-matched group of typically developing children (TD); and to study the relationship between oral language abilities and reading performance using network analysis. They were administered five standardized tests to obtain measures about oral language abilities and reading performance. Results showed that children with DLD were less accurate and slower in reading than TD children. Meanwhile, the network analyses suggest strong and stable connections between reading and oral production in the DLD group. This finding confirms the importance of language abilities for reading acquisition.

Reading comprehension is a fundamental skill to be developed from the early stages of reading acquisition and it is essential for both formative and personal learning. This study examines eye-tracking as a useful and complementary tool in the assessment and improvement of implicit reading comprehension. The aim is to understand the role of eye-tracking in implicit reading comprehension and, complementarily, in intervening skills such as vocabulary, rapid automatized naming, and processing speed. In a final sample of 7-8 year-old 67 students, tests for implicit reading comprehension (literal, inferential, and total), eye-tracking measures, vocabulary, rapid automatized naming, processing speed, as well as tests to control for intellectual and attentional levels were administered. The results of the correlational and regression analyses indicate the existence of predictive relationships between (i) implicit reading comprehension and eye-tracking measures; and additionally, (ii) between intervening skills (vocabulary, rapid automatized naming, processing speed) and eye-tracking measures; and (iii) between implicit reading comprehension and intervening skills (vocabulary, rapid automatized naming, processing speed). In summary, better performance in implicit reading comprehension (literal, inferential, and total) is related to and explained by shorter eye movement times in recognition and access to meaning, larger vocabulary, and faster rapid automatized naming and processing speed. Furthermore, eye-tracking measures are better predictors of implicit reading comprehension. These findings provide promising evidence for the contribution of eye-tracking to optimising the level of implicit reading comprehension, which is applied daily in classrooms.

Background: Previous literature suggests that children with Down syndrome (DS) have difficulties in cognitive and affective components of Theory of Mind (ToM). However, the nature of the distinction between cognitive and affective ToM has not yet been addressed in depth in this population. Aims: This work is aimed at studying the cognitive and affective ToM in children with DS. Methods and Procedures: Cognitive ToM tasks (first-order false belief) and affective ToM tasks (Test of Emotion Comprehension) were administered to 30 children with DS (aged from 4 to 12 years) and to 60 typically developing (TD) children (aged from 2 to 12 years). TD children were divided into 2 groups: a Language control group and a Chronological age control group. Results: Results suggest that children with DS have difficulty with both the cognitive and affective ToM components, even when compared to the language control group. In contrast to children with typical development, children with DS have a better performance in affective ToM. Conclusions: We discuss our results in the light of prior studies describing the difficulties of children with DS in ToM tasks and the role of language in ToM development.

A deeper understanding of what factors influence metacognition has never become more pressing than in today's digital era, in which information flows constantly and quickly. To this end, the present study explored the role of culture in mediating how individuals experience metacognitive phenomena. For this purpose, the International Group on Metacognition (IGM) developed a rigorous standard international protocol to measure metacognition in Spanish-speaking university students (N = 1,461) in 12 cultures in Latin-America and Spain, employing both a subjective measure of metacognitive awareness (the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory [MAI]) and various metrics of objective metacognitive monitoring across three domains of learning--vocabulary, probabilities (mathematical reasoning), and paper folding (visual-spatial reasoning). Data were subsequently compared across the various cultures with subjective metacognitive awareness and the raw frequencies of the four mutually exclusive cells of the 2 × 2 performance/judgment array as outcomes. Results revealed significant differences regarding both macro-level components of subjective metacognitive awareness, knowledge and regulation of cognition. Further, significant and meaningful differences emerged for the raw frequencies of the four mutually exclusive cells as a function of culture, especially for vocabulary, in which differences among cultures emerged for all four cells. Implications for metacognitive research, theory, and practice are discussed.

Different studies have demonstrated that people with dyslexia have difficulties in acquiring fluent reading and writing. These problems are also evident when they learn a second language. The aim of our study was to investigate if there is a linguistic transfer effect for writing in children with dyslexia when they face tasks in English (L2), as well as the possible influence of other linguistic skills (spelling, vocabulary and reading) in English (L2) and in Spanish (L1). Participants completed a series of tasks both in Spanish and English: a picture naming task, a word reading task, a word spelling task, and a written composition of which we analysed its quality through different variables provided by the Coh-metrix software. Our results revealed that children with dyslexia show similar or parallel performance in written composition in both languages, which could imply a language transfer effect from L1 and L2. Besides, basic language skills are related to the characteristics of written composition to a greater extent in English than in Spanish, suggesting the impact of these on the quality of written composition.

Developing the appropriate linguistic and documentation skills in specialised domains is one of the greatest challenges in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses. Among other tools, corpora are intended as efficient resources students can use to improve and develop their thematic, terminological, and phraseological knowledge (Sánchez Ramos, 2020). Based on a non-experimental mixed-methods study, this paper reports the feasibility of a corpus-based approach to teaching medical translation at a postgraduate level. It analyses how a group of 40 postgraduate students at the University of Alcalá (Madrid, Spain) perceive the compilation of their own corpus and the usefulness of corpus management tools (CMTs) in solving thematic, terminological, and phraseological issues. The software LancsBox (Lancaster University) was used, which is a recently created CMT that incorporates automatic tagging, cutting-edge statistics information, and innovative visualization options. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of this data suggest that the ESP students were highly satisfied with the corpus-based approach. Our findings also reveal that postgraduate students incorporated CMTs during the whole course as documentation resources for their translation tasks, and they are willing to use them in their near future professional career. These results show the potential usefulness of CMTs and offer a way of integrating them into the ESP curriculum.

This study aims to investigate whether emotional and behavioral difficulties (EBD) differ between children with cochlear implants (CIs) or hearing aids (HAs), according to multi-informant ratings. Methods: A battery of psychological measures (e.g., Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA), Peabody Image Vocabulary Test (PPVT), and Raven Progressive Matrices Test (RPM), was administered to children with CIs or HAs. The study involved 187 children with CIs, 113 children with HAs, 176 fathers and mothers, and 300 schoolteachers. Results: Significant disagreements were found between children, parents, and schoolteachers with regard to SDQ ratings. Total SDQ difficulties score correlated poorly with other outcomes (e.g., total ITPA, final PPVT, and final RPM). Regression linear analyses showed six socio-demographic and linguistic covariates that significantly predicted children's total SDQ difficulties score. Conclusion: Several independent variables were found to be associated with children's total EBD scores. This article highlights the importance of providing professionals with sufficient training so that they are knowledgeable about the procedures they are to use to support children with EBD (e.g., developing and implementing instructional approaches for school students with EBD).

Describing events may be challenging for any child, but children who use communication aids may face unique linguistic, pragmatic, and strategic challenges in conveying information with the communication means they have available. This study explores strategies used by young, aided communicators when describing the content of a video unknown to their communication partners. The participants of the study were 48 aided communicators (aged 5;3-15;2) from nine countries and seven language groups and their communication partners (parents, professionals, and peers) who used natural speech. Descriptive and statistical analyses were utilized to investigate the relationships between individual characteristics, linguistic and non-linguistic factors, linguistic strategies, and performance in conveying the content of the video event. Analyses of the 48 videotaped interactions revealed the use of a variety of linguistic elements and multimodal strategies, demonstrating both creativity and challenges. Success in relaying messages was significantly related to age, mode of communication, and individual profiles, such as everyday communication functioning and comprehension of grammar. Measures of receptive vocabulary and non-verbal reasoning were not significantly related to communicative success. The use of shared context and negotiation of meaning of potentially ambiguous utterances demonstrate the shared responsibility of disambiguation and meaning construction in interactions involving aided and naturally speaking communicators.

Most research reporting that bilingual children exhibit enhanced cognitive skills and social awareness relative to their monolingual peers focusses on children raised and educated bilingually, making it difficult to pinpoint the degree of second language exposure necessary for such advantages to materialise. The current study measures the social and cognitive skills of Spanish children educated bilingually yet raised monolingually to explore (a) whether bilingual education alone confers advantages, and (b) whether greater second language exposure is key to producing them. It compares three groups of monolingually-raised children in their first year of primary education (i.e. 6-7 years old): one group educated in mainstream 'monolingual' education, one group enrolled in English-Spanish bilingual education with a ratio of 40-60 English-Spanish exposure, and one group enrolled in English-Spanish education with a ratio of 30-70 English-Spanish exposure. After one year of primary education, children attending bilingual education scored significantly higher than monolingual children on a sub-set of cognitive (selective attention; response inhibition) and social (communication; co-operation) skills, with the higher exposure bilingual school outperforming the lower exposure bilingual school on some of these measures.

This study investigates the benefits of Mobile Mediated Communication (MMC) to develop oral skills in second-language learners. A total of 80 Spanish students taking a B1 English course at the University of Almería were studied in this research. According to treatment type, subjects were divided in two groups, experimental and control. A "Whatsapp" group was created where 40 of these students participated in a daily interaction during six months. The samples collected in the application as well as a speaking were used to measure the students' degree of oral development and the type and triggers of the language related episodes (LRE) given rise to mobile chat-based oral interaction. This study focuses on such interaction and seeks to measure the students' degree of oral development through a mixed analysis approach. A temporal axis is used to measure the differences between the groups studied. Significant improvements in term of oral proficiency were observed in the experimental group and negotiations were the LRE most common throughout the activity. it is worth mention that Mobile learning offers an environment where learners can ubiquitously negotiate meaning, reflect and evaluate on their own performance through authentic interaction and feedback, constituting a powerful tool for developing second language proficiency.

Previous research indicates that developmental contexts influence language development. These developmental contexts include bilingualism, which is the focus of the current paper. This study analyses the influence that the acquisition of a language, Catalan, has when the simultaneous acquisition of another similar language, Spanish, occurs. This influence is examined according to degree of exposure to the languages. The parents of 801 children completed the Catalan version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI-II questionnaire, which assesses the acquisition of vocabulary, morphology and grammatical complexity. Subjects were divided into three groups according to age and linguistic context (Catalan monolingual, medium bilingual and familiar bilingual). The results do not reveal substantial differences according to linguistic context. However, children aged 26--30 months with a medium bilingual profile show a higher level of vocabulary as compared to the other groups. The results are discussed in relation to the sociolinguistic context, caregiver diversity, typological distance between the languages and developmental stages of language acquisition. [Translation from Spanish by Jennifer Martin.]

Writing difficulties have typically been investigated as the consequence of learning disabilities. However, several characteristics of texts and the underlying cognitive skills are often shared across these populations. Our aim was to investigate the writing and cognitive profile of children at risk of writing difficulties, regardless of whether they have concomitant diagnoses. Drawing from a sample of 357 primary school children, we identified children who showed low levels on a single writing component, such as handwriting (15), spelling (39) or text generation (17), and 11 children who showed difficulties across two or more components. We compared them to a typically developing group (50) on a series of writing features (e.g., spelling, vocabulary) and cognitive and linguistic skills (e.g., working memory, morphosyntax). Children who struggled with a single writing component showed difficulties also in other components. Children with multiple writing difficulties struggled with most writing features. All children displayed similar levels in key cognitive and linguistic skills. Our data thus present compelling evidence of children who struggle with writing, despite no obvious cognitive or linguistic impairments. [Translation from English by Silvia Montero.]

This article examines factors that promote active multilingualism. For this purpose, the "Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test" was used with 48 children. Their results were linked to a parental questionnaire designed to evaluate the children's linguistic input in their immediate environment. The study shows that, besides a minimum amount of linguistic input, the language constellation (i.e. presence/absence of the majority language at home) is also decisive. At the same time, it seems irrelevant for active bi- and trilingualism which family language policies are chosen (e.g. One person-One Language), as long as the promotion of the minority language does not only take place institutionally, but also at home. Overall, the results indicate that attending a bilingual kindergarten/school alone does not lead to active multilingualism. Family factors and family support seem to be decisive. These include the creation of a linguistically stimulating environment through cultural contact and the language constellation within the family.

This paper examines written language accuracy in a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and a non-CLIL instruction context including grade and gender in the analysis. Essays written by 393 third and fourth year CLIL and non-CLIL secondary education students were evaluated by two measures of second language (L2) accuracy: error-free sentence ratio and errors per word ratio. Errors were analysed and scored as syntactic, morphological, lexical, lexicogrammatical, spelling and punctuation errors. Results revealed that accuracy progressed with grade significantly in the CLIL instruction context whereas in the non-CLIL group only lexicogrammatical errors decreased significantly. The analysis of error subtypes revealed some cases of regression and stabilisation tendencies, with articles posing problems in both contexts and prepositions, determiners, voice, subordination and word order in the non-CLIL context. As regards gender, female participants did not significantly outperform their male peers in written accuracy in the CLIL group as they did in the non-CLIL group indicating that CLIL may help balance gender differences.

Early identification of learning difficulties is a critical component of the Response to Intervention (RtI) model. In kindergarten, the screening of foundational reading skills can provide a data-based guideline for identifying students requiring a more intensive response-based intervention before starting elementary school. This study examines the classification accuracy and best predictors of a set of Spanish curriculum-based measures administered during kindergarten. The study's sample included 189 students tested in the fall, winter, and spring. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was conducted. The composite score of the curriculum-based measurement (CBM) revealed area under the ROC curve (AUC) values of 0.83, 0.97, and 0.94 in the fall, winter, and spring, respectively. Phonemic awareness and letter-sound knowledge were the only isolated measures that demonstrated excellent AUC values throughout kindergarten. Logistic regression models showed that, when entered simultaneously, all measures were significant predictors of reading risk at some moment of the school year.

This initial work on evaluating standardisation tries to explore to what extent standardisation can be evaluated in the same way as terminology planning and language policy and planning. The main reason for exploring this issue is that this kind of evaluation is necessary and has not been undertaken systematically. The work aims to verify the basic hypothesis that terminology planning evaluation (TPE) and language policy and planning evaluation (LPPE) can be applied to the evaluation of standardisation. So, the general question addressed is to what extent can standardisation be evaluated according to the models for TPE and LPPE. After presenting Haugen's model of standardisation and complementing it with some concepts about language corpus planning and restandardisation, this model is analysed from the perspectives of PPE and LPPE, with references to the actions taken as part of the official restandardisation of the Catalan language (the new 2016 Catalan spelling and grammar). The principal original contributions of our work are this analysis of a standardisation model, based on TPE and LPPE evaluation models, and an overall positive verification of the hypothesis, leading us to conclude that standardisation can be evaluated in this way.

Background: Although gender plays an important role in health, most healthcare providers lack knowledge in providing gender-sensitive care. Offering gender-sensitivity training for healthcare providers can help to address gender-based health inequalities. Method: A mixed-methods systematic review of gender-sensitivity training programmes or interventions for healthcare providers was undertaken to assess their outcomes and to document areas for future research. Comprehensive searches of seven international databases were conducted for peer-reviewed literature published between 1998 and 2018. Eligible studies included at least one outcome related to gender-sensitivity training for healthcare providers. Results: Twenty-nine studies met the inclusion criteria. Fourteen studies focused on gender-sensitivity in reducing gender bias towards men and women, and 15 studies focused on addressing the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) patients. Thirty-seven percent of studies showed a significant improvement in gender-related knowledge, attitudes or practice after the training. Multiple training methods were used to teach gender-sensitive care. Common content of the training included learning sex/gender terminology, understanding gender issues and inequalities in health, stigma and discrimination and communication skills. The duration and frequency of interventions ranged considerably. Sex differences in training outcomes also occurred among the learners. Conclusion: Review findings highlight that although gender-sensitivity training for healthcare providers is increasing, there is insufficient evidence to determine its effectiveness. Additional, more rigorously designed studies are needed to assess the long-term implications on learner behaviours and practices, especially across a wide variety of healthcare providers.

Learning to compose texts adequate for different purposes is crucial for becoming literate. We examined developmental changes in the rhetorical structure of written texts produced by Spanish children throughout the early years of elementary school in the light of descriptive writing purposes. Children had also performed tasks to test transcription, reading, cognitive skills, oral vocabulary, and discourse structure. Cross-sectional and longitudinal results show that the structure of the texts evolves from describing qualities to building a descriptive schema in which the described entity is introduced, qualities are justified, and a generalization is drawn from previously provided details. The ability to produce a self-sustained discourse, the ability to handle meaning relation among words, and a good working memory explained differences at a base level, whereas a higher command of spelling explained developmental changes in the structure of the text.

We tested the capability of deaf adolescents, including a group of users of cochlear implants, to generate inferences during spoken language comprehension and whether they benefited from the use of sign-supported speech (SSS). Stimuli consisted of 24 short video-recorded texts in spoken language and in SSS. Participants responded to literal and inferential multiple-choice questions. In spoken language cochlear implant users had more difficulty in processing inferential than literal information and found predictive inferences harder than associative inferences. The level of spoken language proficiency was related to inference generation, especially for predictive inferences. Similarly, deaf native signers had more difficulties in generating predictive inferences, although SSS increased their comprehension. Lip-reading skills and working memory were positively related to accuracy in SSS. The inclusion of SSS only had a positive impact on the comprehension of native signers. Results suggest that cochlear implant users would benefit from an intervention to enhance verbal skills.

Acquisitionists generally assume a relation between code-mixing in young bilingual and trilingual children and language dominance. In our cross-sectional study we investigated the possible relation between code-mixing and language dominance in 122 children raised in Spain or Germany. They were bilingual, trilingual or multilingual, the latter acquiring more than three languages. The definition of language dominance is grounded on Birdsong's (2014. Dominance in bilingualism: Foundations of measurement, with insights from the study of handedness. In C. Silva-Corvalán, & J. Treffers-Daller (Eds.), "Language Dominance in Bilinguals: Issues of operationalization and measurement" (pp. 85-105). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) distinction between domains and dimensions. The main result of our study is that code-mixing is rare in a monolingual setting which means that bilingual, trilingual and multilingual children are able to behave monolingually. Domain-specific language dominance can explain the relatively high mixing rate in the Catalan tests but concerning the dimensions of language dominance no relation was found between the children's code-mixing and language (un)balance. A separate analysis of intra- and intersentential mixing reveals that intersentential mixing is determined by the typological proximity between the child's languages. All instances of intrasentential code-mixing, were insertional.

This article underscores the importance of keeping up to date with vocabulary which is currently employed in English-speaking countries. It argues that textbooks, dictionaries and even corpora are not the most reliable sources to do this, and puts forward a pedagogical proposal--grounded in the Lexical Approach and three pedagogical innovation projects--to incorporate "real" English into the language classroom. After clarifying what is meant by such "real" English expressions and providing a possible classification for them, it suggests diverse sources of "real" English input--including telecollaboration, sitcoms and TV series, podcasts, Internet texts, and recent bestsellers--and subsequently presents a set of tried-and-true activities to exploit them, activities which allow the incorporation of pedagogically innovative approaches into the ELT classroom. The ultimate aim is to link the classroom with what goes on beyond its confines and to make our students' lexical competence approximate that of native English speakers.

The programs WordSmith and VocabProfile were used to research lexical differences between essays written in English by Spanish undergraduates and a set of essays independently judged as being of TWE grade 6 standard. The results indicated that writing by this group of students was generally characterised by low lexical variation, a preponderance of high-frequency words and under-use of academic vocabulary in comparison with the target style. Reasons for the apparent lexical simplicity of this sample of student writing are discussed.

This study intends to contribute to L2 emotion vocabulary research by looking at the words that primary-school English as foreign language learners produce in response to prompts in a lexical availability task. Specifically, it aims to ascertain whether emotion prompts (Love, Hate, Happy and Sad) generate a greater number of words than non-emotion prompts (School and Animals). It also seeks to identify the words learners associate with each semantic category to determine whether the words produced in response to emotion prompts differ from non-emotion words. The results showed a significant difference in the number of words generated across prompts. Most words were produced for the prompt School, followed by Animals, Happy, Love, Hate and Sad. Non-emotion prompts elicited a higher number of words than emotion prompts, and within the latter, a significant effect of valence was observed as learners retrieved a higher number of words in response to positive emotion prompts than to negative prompts. Overall, learners' lexical availability output in each of the six prompts showed the predominance of nouns over other word classes. However, slightly different patterns were also observed for the top 10 responses to Happy, Hate and Sad, and together with nouns, other word classes appeared as well.

New possibilities offered by mobile devices for special education students have led to the design of skill acquisition software applications. Advances in mobile technologies development have made progress possible in helping teachers with autistic students modelling and evaluation. "Chain of Words" theoretical basis is the autism inventory known as IDEA (Inventory of Autism Spectrum Disorders). Our application is based on the functional area of communication. Tests carried out in educational institutions using "Chain of Words" have shown that it is an adequate intervention supporting tool for such deficits. In addition, teacher can customize task contents according to each child's characteristics; thus allowing a more personal intervention within the communication field.

This article reports on a study investigating the relative influence of the first language and dominant language (L1) on second language (L2) and third language (L3) morpho-lexical processing. A lexical decision task compared the responses to English NV-er compounds (e.g. "taxi driver") and non-compounds provided by a group of native speakers and three groups of learners at various levels of English proficiency: L1 Spanish--L2 English sequential bilinguals and two groups of early Spanish-Basque bilinguals with English as their L3. Crucially, the two trilingual groups differed in their first and dominant language (i.e. L1 Spanish--L2 Basque vs. L1 Basque--L2 Spanish). Our materials exploit an (a)symmetry between these languages: while Basque and English pattern together in the basic structure of (productive) NV-er compounds, Spanish presents a construction that differs in directionality as well as inflection of the verbal element (V[subscript [3SG]] + N). Results show between and within group differences in accuracy and response times that may be ascribable to two factors besides proficiency: the number of languages spoken by a given participant and their dominant language. An examination of response bias reveals an influence of the participants' first and dominant language on the processing of NV-er compounds. Our data suggest that morphological information in the non-native lexicon may extend beyond morphemic structure and that, similarly to bilingualism, there are costs to sequential multilingualism in lexical retrieval.

The present paper explores and compares the receptive vocabulary sizes of two groups of learners of different native languages. One of the most widely used vocabulary size tests is the Vocabulary Levels Test designed by Nation. Some reservations have been raised in relation to the adequacy of the Vocabulary Levels Test to estimate the vocabulary size of learners with Romance languages. In order to examine this reservation, this paper sets out to describe and compare the vocabulary size estimates of two groups of learners with different mother tongues, Spanish and German. A total of 41 German and 41 Spanish native speakers participated in the study. They averaged between 9 and 10 years of age and attended the 4th grade of primary education. Proficiency level tests revealed that their English level was comparable. Analysis of the results of the Vocabulary Levels Test show that mean and median values are very similar between the two language groups and no significant differences could be found. Results are discussed in light of critical constraints on word knowledge and vocabulary acquisition such as age and word origin.

There is growing evidence supporting the importance of executive functions, and specifically working memory updating (WMU), for children's academic achievement. This study aimed to assess the specific contribution of updating to the prediction of academic performance. Two updating tasks, which included different updating components, were administered to 97 fourth-grade children. The keeping track task involves retrieval and substitution of information, while the numerical updating task also includes a transformation component. Academic attainment was assessed through standardised tests of verbal comprehension, arithmetic operations, mathematical problems and an assessment made by the teacher. The relative contribution to academic attainment, of the updating measures and measures related to intelligence, was compared. Results showed that both updating tasks are predictive measures of academic attainment, although the numerical updating task appeared to be a more consistent predictor of children's performance. The relationship between updating and academic attainment is discussed, and possible educational implications are considered. The role of the transformation component of WMU is highlighted. This component could make a distinct and independent contribution to performance and, by extension, could be particularly relevant to the prediction of academic achievement.

Previous studies implicate suprasegmental phonology in reading acquisition. However, little is known about how suprasegmental sensitivity develops or how it contributes to reading. Here, 130 Spanish primary-school children participated in this 2-year longitudinal study. Nonlinguistic rhythm, lexical-stress sensitivity and metrical-stress sensitivity, along with phonological awareness, vocabulary, nonverbal intelligence, and reading aloud, were assessed on five occasions. Results suggest that prosody abilities have different developmental trajectories and that prosody explains unique variance in reading beyond that explained by other factors. There was some evidence that the contribution of each prosody skill occurred at different phases in reading development. Nonlinguistic rhythm, lexical-stress sensitivity, and metrical-stress sensitivity assessed at the end of kindergarten, the start of Grade 1, and the end of Grade 1, respectively, predicted reading performance 6 months later. Nevertheless, sample size and reliability temper the conclusions that can be made. The implications of prosody skills for literacy development are discussed.

The data reported in this article come from a large project whose goal was to explore how Latin American students in Catalonia, Spain use their two languages--Spanish and Catalan--to support their learning of mathematics in small groups with other students who are Spanish- or Catalan-dominant. For 5 years, lessons from bilingual mathematics classrooms in three public secondary schools were video-recorded and transcribed. In the presentation of findings, I discuss three language practices that emerged from the analyses of several classroom instances as follows: (1) caution with mathematical vocabulary, (2) invention of terms, and (3) word-for-word translation. One example is chosen to represent each practice and some of its situated effects. The first two examples support the view that the experience of language difficulties, either real or presumed, contributes to generating opportunities that may be beneficial to mathematics learning. The third example, where the focus on the mathematics is hindered, points to a contrasting finding. Unlike other studies in the field, which have reported the difficulties and obstacles that arise in learning and teaching due to bilingualism in the classroom, I propose a change of focus through the conceptualization of language as a potential for thinking and doing, and particularly for learning and teaching mathematics.

The key role of administrative staff in the implementation of specific institutional policies at university has often been ignored when analysing policies or attitudes related to higher education. Consequently, little is known about the administrative staff's attitudes and involvement relating to the processes of internationalisation and multilingualism in higher education. In order to confront this problem, this paper is intended to shed some light on the following questions: (1) What features do administrative staff associate with the concepts of "international university" and "multilingual university"? (2) What degree of interconnection do they establish between internationalisation and multilingualism at university? and (3) How do their views compare with those of academic staff and students? The study combines quantitative data, obtained through a Likert-scale based questionnaire, and qualitative data, derived from open questions included in the same questionnaire as well as two focus group sessions with members of the administrative staff. The analysis of the data shows that for administrative staff an international university is characterised by incoming mobility, the presence of English as a third academic language and academic excellence. A multilingual university has more advantages than disadvantages for them, and most of these are connected with the internationalisation of the institution.

The work we present in this paper aims to help teachers create multiple-choice science tests. We focus on a scientific vocabulary-learning scenario taking place in a Basque-language educational environment. In this particular scenario, we explore the option of automatically generating Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQ) by means of Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and the use of corpora. More specifically, human experts select scientific articles and identify the target terms (i.e., words). These terms are part of the vocabulary studied in the school curriculum for 13-14-year-olds and form the starting point for our system to generate MCQs. We automatically generate distractors that are similar in meaning to the target term. To this end, the system applies semantic similarity measures making use of a variety of corpus-based and graph-based approaches. The paper presents a qualitative and a quantitative analysis of the generated tests to measure the quality of the proposed methods. The qualitative analysis is based on expert opinion, whereas the quantitative analysis is based on the MCQ test responses from students in secondary school. Nine hundred and fifty one students from 18 schools took part in the experiments. The results show that our system could help experts in the generation of MCQ.

This article presents the results of a lexical decision experiment in which the base frequency (BF) effect is explored in reading disabled children and skilled readers. Three groups of participants were created. The first group was composed of children with reading disorders, the second group of skilled readers matched with the first group for chronological age and the third group of skilled readers matched for vocabulary size. The results of the experiment showed strong effects for Group, BF and also for the Group by BF interaction. Children matched for chronological age with children with reading disorders were significantly faster and more accurate than children of the other groups, who did not show any difference from each other. The effect of BF showed that children responded faster to stimuli composed of frequent bases than to stimuli with less frequent bases. However, the analysis of the interaction between Group and BF showed that only the skilled readers matched to children with reading disorders for chronological age benefited from the BF effect. The results of the experiment are discussed in the framework of theoretical accounts of morphological processing in children as well as considering the role played by the experimental task. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

Participants performed a 2-choice categorization task on visible word targets that were preceded by novel (unpracticed) prime words. The prime words were presented for 33 ms and followed either immediately (Experiments 1-3) or after a variable delay (Experiments 1 and 4) by a pattern mask. Both subjective and objective measures of prime visibility were used in all experiments. On 80% of the trials the primes and targets belonged to different categories (incongruent trials), whereas in the remaining 20% (congruent trials) they could be either strong or weak semantically related category members. Positive congruency effects (reaction times faster on congruent than on incongruent trials) were consistently found, but only when the mask immediately followed the primes, and participants reported being unaware of the identity of the primes. Primes followed by a delayed mask (such that participants reported being aware of their identity) produced either nonreliable facilitation or reliable reversed priming (strategic), depending on whether the prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony was either short (200 ms; Experiments 1 and 4) or long (1,000 ms; Experiment 4). Facilitatory priming with immediate mask was found strong (a) even for participants who performed at chance in prime visibility tests; and (b) for high but not for weakly semantically related category coordinates, irrespective of category size (animals, body parts). These findings provide evidence that unconscious congruency priming by unpracticed words from large stimulus sets critically depends on associative strength and/or semantic similarity between category coexemplars. (Contains 3 tables and 6 footnotes.)

This study reports on a pilot implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) at a Spanish university. In order to find out how both lecturers and students perceived their experience, several interviews and meetings took place with lecturers, and an open-ended questionnaire was passed to students. The meetings and interviews with lecturers yielded important information about their satisfaction. It was found out that lecturers were mostly interested in practising and improving their English spoken fluency, they did not feel that the quality of their teaching had been sacrificed, they had not included any question on language learning in their assessment and they showed great reluctance to receiving any CLIL methodological training. As to students' reactions, analysis of their questionnaires revealed that most of them found the experience positive. Their self-reported perceived gains unanimously point to the specialised vocabulary they have learnt and, in the second place, to an improvement of their listening and speaking skills. The most outstanding negative aspect they found is lecturers' insufficient level of English. CLIL training specially adapted to university teachers is necessary so that lecturers can overcome their reluctance to a methodological training and thereby the potential of CLIL is realised. (Contains 4 figures and 2 tables.)

The aim of the present study was to assess the influence of word image vividness on the immediate and long-term recall (one-day interval) of words using either the rote repetition learning method or the keyword mnemonics method in a sample of adults aged 55 to 70 years. Subjects learned a list of concrete and abstract words using either rote repetition or keyword mnemonics. Individuals using keyword mnemonics recalled more concrete than abstract words both immediately after learning and after a one-day time interval. In contrast, subjects using the repetition method recalled more abstract than concrete words immediately after learning; however, no difference in the number of recalled concrete and abstract words were found after the one-day interval. These findings are discussed in the context of previous studies, and new lines of research are proposed. (Contains 2 tables.)

The educational experience related over the following pages is the result of several research projects undertaken after an evaluation of the vocabulary size of final year English philology students at the University of Granada (Spain), who were found to have a significant deficiency in their lexical competence. In view of the results obtained, which, amongst other things, demonstrated a clear cut lexical shortfall for future teachers of English, a group of lecturers from the same department formed the research group ADELEX and designed a semi-virtual course to redress this perceived deficit. The initiative was to become one of the first subjects to be sanctioned under the auspices of the Centre for Virtual Learning at the University of Granada (CEVUG). Later on, this online learning experience joined the Andalusian Virtual Campus (Campus Andaluz Virtual) and the new ADELEX was transformed into a fully virtual course, which obviously gave the project a wider scope. In its present incarnation, this updated version of ADELEX has a twofold purpose. On the one hand, its aim is to research into the nature of lexis (i.e. lexicology, semantics, pedagogical lexicography, phraseology etc.) as well as to focus on state-of-the-art digital methodology to solve real and meaningful problems that promote linguistic interaction in addition to autonomous and cooperative learning. On the other hand, it seeks to question Spanish university education on three fronts: (i) the integration and pedagogical use of new technologies in university pedagogy; (ii) European convergence and the implementation of the ECTS (European Credit Transfer System); and (iii) educational innovation aimed at bridging the gap between the university and the reality confronting students both in social and vocational contexts. Finally, this learning experience has been awarded the European Label for Pedagogic Innovation by the European Commission and the Spanish Ministry of Education, and is funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation within the National Research Programme. (Contains 4 tables, 19 figures and 4 notes.)

Whether words are or are not activated within the lexicon of the nonused language is an important question for accounts of bilingual word production. Prior studies have not led to conclusive results, either because alternative accounts could be proposed for their findings or because activation could have been artificially induced by the experimental paradigms. Moreover, previous data only involved target translations, and nothing is known about the activation of nontarget words in the nonused language. The picture-picture interference paradigm was used here, since it allowed the activation of nontarget words to be determined without showing stimuli that could artificially activate the nonused language. Proficient Spanish-Catalan speakers were presented with pairs of partially overlapping colored pictures and were instructed to name the green picture and ignore the red picture. In Experiment 1, distractor pictures with cognate names interfered more than distractor pictures with noncognate names. In Experiment 2, facilitation was observed when the names of the distractor pictures in the nonused language were phonologically related to the names of the target pictures. Overall, these results indicate that nontarget words are activated in the nonused language, at least in the case of proficient bilingual speakers. These results help researchers to constrain theories of bilingual lexical access. (Contains 3 footnotes, 2 tables and 2 figures.)

Over the last decade, there has been increasing evidence for syllabic processing during visual word recognition. If syllabic effects prove to be independent from orthographic redundancy, this would seriously challenge the ability of current computational models to account for the processing of polysyllabic words. Three experiments are presented to disentangle effects of the frequency of syllabic units and orthographic segments in lexical decision. In Experiment 1 the authors obtained an inhibitory syllable frequency effect that was unaffected by the presence or absence of a bigram trough at the syllable boundary. In Experiments 2 and 3 an inhibitory effect of initial syllable frequency but a facilitative effect of initial bigram frequency emerged when manipulating 1 of the 2 measures and controlling for the other in Spanish words starting with consonant-vowel syllables. The authors conclude that effects of syllable frequency and letter-cluster frequency are independent and arise at different processing levels of visual word recognition. Results are discussed within the framework of an interactive activation model of visual word recognition. (Contains 7 footnotes, 7 tables, and 4 figures.)