This study examined cross-language transfer of morphological awareness in Chinese-English bilingual children. One hundred and thirty-seven first to fourth graders participated in the study. The children were tested on parallel measures of compound awareness, vocabulary, word reading and reading comprehension in Chinese and English. They also received measures of English derivational awareness, English phonological awareness and nonverbal reasoning. Structural equation modelling was used to compare a baseline model with only within-language paths to a model with cross-language paths. The cross-language model fit significantly better than the within-language model, suggesting transfer of morphological awareness between English and Chinese. In particular, we observed a bidirectional relationship between English compound awareness and Chinese vocabulary. Furthermore, English compound awareness was a significant predictor of Chinese reading comprehension. The conditions that support transfer of morphological awareness and the impact of transfer on literacy development in Chinese and English are discussed.Morphological awareness refers to the ability to reflect upon and manipulate morphemes, the smallest phonological unit that carries meaning, and to use word formation rules to construct and understand morphologically complex words (Kuo & Anderson, 2006). Recent research has identified morphological awareness as an important predictor of literacy constructs including vocabulary, word reading and reading comprehension in , 2009) among monolingual and bilingual children. Only a relatively small number of studies, however, have examined the cross-language impact of morphological awareness on literacy development in bilingual children. The present study investigated

Instructor Talk—noncontent language used by instructors in classrooms—is a recently defined and promising variable for better understanding classroom dynamics. Having previously characterized the Instructor Talk framework within the context of a single course, we present here our results surrounding the applicability of the Instructor Talk framework to noncontent language used by instructors in novel course contexts. We analyzed Instructor Talk in eight additional biology courses in their entirety and in 61 biology courses using an emergent sampling strategy. We observed widespread use of Instructor Talk with variation in the amount and category type used. The vast majority of Instructor Talk could be characterized using the originally published Instructor Talk framework, suggesting the robustness of this framework. Additionally, a new form of Instructor Talk—Negatively Phrased Instructor Talk, language that may discourage students or distract from the learning process—was detected in these novel course contexts. Finally, the emergent sampling strategy described here may allow investigation of Instructor Talk in even larger numbers of courses across institutions and disciplines. Given its widespread use, potential influence on students in learning environments, and ability to be sampled, Instructor Talk may be a key variable to consider in future research on teaching and learning in higher education.

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To evaluate the effects of bilingual education on minority-language children’s English language and literacy outcomes, we compared grade 1 Chinese-speaking Canadian children enrolled in three different instructional programs (French Immersion, Chinese-English Paired Bilingual, English-only). ANCOVA results revealed that the French immersion children outperformed the other two groups on measures of English phonological awareness and word reading and that the bilingual groups were comparable to monolingual English norms on a test of receptive vocabulary. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine cross-language transfer of skills. French morphological awareness explained unique variance in English word reading and vocabulary for the French immersion group. For the other two groups, Chinese phonological awareness was significantly related to English word reading. Our results suggest that instruction in French or Chinese does not delay the development of early English language and literacy skills for Chinese-speaking children, as the children may be able to leverage skills from their other language to facilitate their English learning. Keywords: Bilingual education; French immersion; cross-language transfer