This established text--now revised and updated--reveals how spoken language skills are acquired and how they affect children's later reading and writing achievement. With a unique focus on the needs of educators, the book examines the foundations of language in the developing brain. It explores the relationship of language processes to core…

Notes that regardless of the language, children acquire language on the same general schedule and the same cognitive path. Explores the process of child language acquisition, from sounds, through word meanings, to syntax and grammar. (HTH)

Examines the development of students' writing competence in English, their second language. Explores Lev S. Vygotsky's perspective of the dialectal relationship between language and cognition. Discusses Vygotskyan concepts of mediation, higher mental functions, interaction, internalization, proximal development, and problem solving. (KEH)

Reviews a monograph which addresses children's higher-order thinking skills. Suggests the following for teaching problem solving: identify and develop content-independent and content-dependent problem-solving skills, connect developed skills through workshop-style activities to subject discipline, and help students identify and reconstruct their…

Focusing on the relationship between learning oral language and learning about written language, this book discusses the emergent literacy (EL) of children growing up in a Western, print-oriented society, as well as findings of research conducted during the past 15 years on how children make sense of the way in which literacy works in their…