Provides a historical view of child language research, showing that investigations of child language have come full circle in their approach to gathering data. Discusses implications for teachers in encouraging children's progression to adult-like conversation. (HTH)

A major purpose of the research reported here is to determine whether or not children of minority backgrounds possess the ability to tell stories and verbalize in narrative form at age 3 and 4. Narratives and speech play were collected over a 9-month period in two Headstart classes in Honolulu (Hawaii). The children, most of mixed backgrounds,…

A study used children's definitions to explore the culture of the classroom from the perspective of the child. Definitions for school-related terms were elicited from first graders in two classrooms of a public elementary school in the Chicago metropolitan area. After having been acclimated to the presence of the researchers, the students were…

The following papers and reports on discourse analysis are included here: (1) "Discourse Analysis, What's That?" by Hatch and Long; (2) "Contextual Analysis of English: Applications to TESL" by Celce-Murcia; (3) "Discourse and Second Language Acquisition of Yes/No Questions" by Vander Brook, Schlue, and Campbell; (4)…

A study examined children's use of private speech in early childhood classrooms. The study's three goals were: to determine the degree to which private speech is used; to replicate and extend previous research with older children; and to examine the classroom's particular contexts and activity settings which maximize children's use of private…

This report assesses the state of the art of research into and accepted knowledge of "language in the classroom," particularly in Scotland. The discussion is organized in six sections: (1) language-related causes of educational failure and remedial programs set up with the intention of compensating for various kinds of deprivation; (2)…

This is a research report on the acquisition and development of language in children from 4 to 6 years as observed in the pre-elementary grades. The research was done by a number of teams scattered throughout France, and this book is a collection of the papers prepared as a result of their research. The report is divided into five sections. The…

With particular attention to the use of questions and the maintenance of topics, the classroom discussion of kindergarten children and their teacher during a storybook lesson was analyzed to determine how conversational control is maintained and what rules of conversation might apply in the classroom. A transcript for discourse analysis was…

Noting that while laboratory investigations of recordings of children's spontaneous verbal creations or repetitions of traditional forms in their natural play habitats have indicated that they do engage in systematic explorations of language structures in their play, this paper points out that there have been no investigations of whether such…

A pilot study was conducted as part of a larger sociological investigation of small group interaction. Specifically, the study dealt with communication in three first-grade advanced reading groups, each composed of 15 children, and focused on two types of requests: those for action and those for information. Student interactions were audio- and…

Based on the assumption that the same conditions that promote talk in the preschool years might continue to promote oracy if they could be replicated in schools, this paper investigates conditions most likely to promote growth in oral communication, summarizes the findings of two relevant Australian research studies, and draws implications for…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 30 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) conditional constructions in modern English; (2) phonological and phonetic effects of nasalization on vowel height; (3) neural coding of pitch; (4) the…

This paper reviews studies on classroom talk and on mother-child interaction; it compares the latter with classroom talk and speculates on what language in the classroom could be. The discussion of language in the classroom revolves around: (1) the speech situation, that is, a situation organized in terms of some nonverbal activity; (2) the speech…

The assumption that question-answer sequences consist of two moves was examined using data from recordings of second-grade classrooms in Austin, Texas. Interactions initiated by children's spontaneous questions in informal, small group settings were evaluated. Twenty-nine dialogue samples are presented and analyzed. Four issues in the study of…

This pamphlet is the first in a series of ten stemming from the view that language is central to learning, that teachers can gain insights into their work and into learning by examining the language of the classroom, and that current language theory can be the means to such insights. The pamphlet contains a description of an informal study…