A proposed strategy for language assessment advocates a combination of descriptive and formal assessment measures. This approach involves a parent-clinician interview, parent-child observations, clinician-directed formal and nonformal assessment procedures, and a parent-clinician interpretation. An elaborated sample of language assessment is…

Considered are three components of comprehension (literal meaning, presupposition and inference, and illocutionary acts), and reviewed are types of clinical instruments used to measure language comprehension in children. (Author/CL)

The article describes a computerized language analysis system that produces a detailed description and summary statistics to track language growth within student populations. This microcomputer-based language assessment system simplifies identification of deficits in productive language, enabling the teacher or clinician to spend more time…

Language samples were elicited from 18 kindergarten and 18 second-grade students, using three variations of an imperative sentence language sampling procedure. (Author/CL)

Confusion is cited regarding the meaning and nature of central auditory dysfunction, and types of tests composing a central auditory test battery are described. Tests focus on auditory closure, auditory figure-ground, and dichotic listening. (CL)

A comparison of pragmatic criteria (such as nonfluencies, revisions, delays, and inappropriate shifts) and traditionally employed surface-oriented criteria (morphological and syntactic structures) with 10 bilingual children (six to eight years old) referred for special education evaluation revealed that pragmatic criteria were superior predictors…

A study of various accents characteristics of certain groups in Great Britain and the prestige associated with these accents is presented. (CK)

The paper describes how microcomputer courseware can be developed to provide interactive receptive language testing and training materials for the bilingual, language handicapped child. A description of a prototype program which has been used to both test and train language impaired children is provided. (Author)

The study examined whether an animal naming task would discriminate between 286 normal students (grades K-9) and 123 language disordered students (5-16 years old). The task was of a free and controlled association type for identifying word retrieval problems. Each subject (S) was administered the task individually in the school or clinic setting.…

The article looks at syntactic deficiencies involving simple clause structures and grammatical morphology in young children. A framework for understanding the development of simple clause structures is presented followed by a discussion of the correlates of early syntactic development. Procedures to assess and remediate syntactic deficiencies are…

The article suggests that comparability, representativeness, and typicality must be considered along with length when collecting language samples. A framework is offered for selecting or devising tasks, and one successful battery is described which has been field tested on language-disordered children with syntax problems. (CL)

The author reviews methods of studying individuals in context (ecological, phenomenological, and system approaches) and offers suggestions for implementing these approaches in identification, assessment, and intervention procedures for language-disordered children. (CL)

The article outlines strategies for improving the assessment of language at the school level through staff involvement in designing and implementing a school based language assessment program. (Author)

Types of utterances (with locative action utterances specifically differentiated) were evaluated in a language-impaired child tracked between one year, six months and three years of age. Comparison with utterances in other children suggests the importance of such a fine-grained analysis in detecting semantic properties of child language…

To investigate the ability of 35 mothers to describe the language skills of their preschool children referred to a diagnostic center, mothers completed the Verbal Language Development Scale and children were tested on the Utah Test of Language Development. (Author/CL)