Correct Response: D. In the scenario, the student demonstrates that the word "horse" is part of his aural receptive vocabulary (vocabulary he is able to comprehend when presented aurally) because he correctly points to a picture of a horse when prompted. However, he is not able to generate the word independently, which indicates that the word is not yet part of his oral expressive vocabulary (vocabulary he is able to recall and generate orally). This is a common occurrence in language acquisition. A is incorrect because the concept of overreliance on picture cues to make meaning from a text is related to the development of decoding strategies in beginning reading. Clearly, the student is not reading the text. Furthermore, his pointing to an illustration of a horse to answer a simple wh- question is an appropriate use of picture cues for a student who is most likely an entering-level English language learner. B is incorrect because oral retelling is generally an informal activity, so the amount of anxiety would not likely be high enough to prevent him from recalling a word, if the word were part of his active, oral expressive vocabulary. Finally, the scenario offers no clues about the phonology of the student's first language, making C incorrect. In addition, the scenario states that the student had difficulty recalling the word, which indicates a vocabulary issue rather than a phonology issue.
