This longitudinal study documents a trilingual child's struggle with decoding and word recognition, the remedies sought to help him start reading in his second language (English) while he was in French immersion, and his performance after the intervention on tests of phonological awareness in L1 Romanian, L2 English, and L3 French. The study…

Some students enter the world of mathematics with a disadvantage. The authors explored the causes for this from a language-processing perspective. They were particularly concerned with students with potential learning disabilities or specific language impairments. They also explored the role of language-mediated instruction in creating an…

Purpose: This study examined the development of timing characteristics in early spontaneous speech of children who were later identified as having reading disability (RD). Method: Child-adult play sessions were recorded longitudinally at 2 and 3 years of age in 27 children, most of whom were at high familial risk for RD. For each speaking turn,…

One source of potential difficulty for struggling readers is the variability of texts across grade levels. This article explores the use of automatic natural language processing techniques to identify dimensions of variation within a corpus of school-appropriate texts. Specifically, we asked: Are there identifiable dimensions of lexical and…

The many benefits of storytelling are listed. The article gives information on how to become a storyteller and offers tips on beginnings and endings. (MT)

This article begins by identifying that children have a spontaneous predilection for playing with language, engaging in poetic discourse even before their first poetry lesson. Although children's language play is relatively unresearched in the classroom, in a case study of two groups of pupils aged between 10 and 11, it was observed that children…

Discusses the challenges, the fears and the rewards encountered by the parent of a disabled child as that child enters the mainstream schooling system. (NH)

Examines the stage-like nature of children's spelling development. Finds little evidence for either predicted qualitative differences in stage classification of errors or in stage consistency across grades. Discusses implications for theories of spelling development and instructional practices. (NH)

Children with language disorders experience problems in three dimensions of semantics: (1) content of content (reference, referents, concepts); (2) form of content (structural units of meaning); (3) use of content (functional variation in meaning). Teacher intervention strategies in each area (e.g., for problems of reference, sentence meaning,…

Reports on an attempt to informally assess the practicality of an interactive, language processing model for curriculum development.

Reports a study (n=18) that compared growth in music reading skills among a group of students taught note recognition in isolation with a group taught by strategies focusing on whole-to-part relationships. Results favored the whole-to-part strategy. (BSR)

Emphasizes that, in order to comprehend, a reader must chunk the many words of a sentence into meaningful groups of words. Offers suggestions for developing "thought units" in the upper grades. (FL)

Discusses recent brain research as it pertains to reading instruction. (DD)

Describes the related processes of metaphoric production and comprehension as they are represented by students in the five-to-eleven year age range. Offers guidelines for incorporating the exploration of metaphor in elementary school language programs. (HTH)

Recalls childhood experiences which influenced the author in becoming a writer and a teacher. Explores the symbolic power humans wield with language, which extends from a single word to a phrase to a whole story. (MG)