Students must use oral and written explanations to demonstrate their grasp of academic content, but little is known about the progression of elementary students' explanatory language, particularly oral language. The current study of 512 explanations produced by 128 third- through sixth-grade students examines whether children's oral explanations…

The writing performance of 64 elementary school children with a history of specific language impairment was examined to evaluate both the nature of the children's difficulties with writing and the relationship between oral language, reading, and writing. Children were assessed at age 8 on a range of language, literacy, and cognitive measures and…

This investigation was concerned with five questions: (1) To what degree to children in grade 5 use the same words in speaking and writing? (2) Do they use similar sentence structure in speaking and writing? (3) Do they maintain the same quality of expression in speaking and writing? (4) Is there a difference in the language performance of boys…

Investigates the relative influences of medium and context variables by comparing seven- and eight-year-old children's spoken and written explanations in varying contexts: a story task, a question task, a sentence completion task, and a whole sentence production task. Findings reveal the significant influence of context as compared to medium on…