Highlights how language of journalists and academics to describe children's experiences reflects and influences the position and rights accorded to children in the English-speaking world. Contends that children's low status is perpetuated through "textual abuse" in academic literature on children's rights. Maintains that children are…

This article reports some outcomes from an exploratory study that compares children diagnosed with ADHD and without language impairment with typically developing children for aspects of language use. Discourse analysis based on a systemic functional linguistics approach is applied to spoken and written samples from three different text types that…

A study investigated the effects of the language used in the school environment on girls' perspectives on femininity. Subjects were aged 4-11, and were the only girls in a small rural Australian school. Data were gathered by analysis of spoken and written language used in the classroom. Analysis focused on relationships and socialization as…

The goal of the study was to compare the literacy challenges faced by children who speak nonstandard dialects of English and for whom Standard English is a "second dialect" with challenges faced by children for whom Standard English is a "second language." The study focused on the extent to which discourse patterns in the…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 14 titles deal with the following topics: case studies of college student and adult composing processes; developing patterns and individual differences in children's writing; writing apprehension's relation to writing quality;…

Papers by teachers and teacher trainers address issues in bilingualism and related teaching techniques in the elementary school classroom in England. They are derived from an inservice teacher training project. Essays include: "Investigating Children's Discourse in the Primary Classroom: The Linguistic Demands of Classroom Tasks"…