Research has been conducted regarding the linguistic structure of children's language usage. There has not, however, been an attempt to relate children's knowledge of vocabulary to their teachers' use of vocabulary. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the vocabulary used by teachers and the proportion of that…

The basic objective of this research was to determine whether educators were justified in lumping togetner all Negro speech as "Negro Dialect" or whether there were wide variations within the inner city Negro community which educators should take into account when preparing reading materials. Thirty first-grade Negro children were…

Thirteen Mexican-American children in Corpus Christi, Texas, most approximately six years old, were interviewed in Spanish for the purpose of establishing the phonology of their dialect. The linguistic competence of the children, not their performance, was of primary interest. A phonological chart was devised based on the data derived from the…

Ten metalinguistic tasks of intellectual development were studied in five- and six-year-old children using factor analysis. Results suggested that metalinguistic awareness can be viewed as developing in association with other intellectual activities, and that it can be conceived as a unitary construct. (55 references) (Author/CFM)

The purpose of this study was to synthesize a category system for observation of communicative functions in children's speech and to test that category system by recording observations of interactions within a first-grade classroom. The observation system which was designed attempts to account for all factors of a communication situation and to…

Presents case studies of two first-grade children, examining their writing as a linguistic and social process that involves the child in an exploration of both oral and written language within the social context of the classroom. (HTH)

A study explored context effects on two selected indexes of communicative competence in the narrative language of a sample of first grade children. The 30 subjects each completed 2 tasks--the retelling of a story that had been read to them and the dictation of an original story. These narratives were recorded and analyzed for linguistic competence…

This paper discusses how the vision of the child as a member of a community has been reflected in and has helped shape recent research in language arts education in early childhood. The paper discusses how researchers in language arts education have focused on (1) a range of genres (socially defined language events), including how children use…

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…

The variety of language produced in school was examined with regard to the functions for which children use language and to elements of the context, emphasizing activities in which children engage and the expectations held by teachers and children. Language data was gathered from twelve children who wore a concealed, wireless recorder and were…

Investigated the relationship between children's failures to produce unambiguous utterances and the mental effort demands in children (ages five, six, seven, and nine years), using finger-tapping and message production tasks, separately and simultaneously. Findings suggest that the relative effort requirements of communication decrease with…

This study attempted to answer five question: do black inner-city students at the first grade level associate Vernacular Black English (VBE) with black speakers and Standard English (SE) with white speakers? Do black inner-city students prefer VBE or SE? Is there a significant relationship between the self-concept of these students and their…

The creative oral language elicited from 45 preoperational and 40 concrete operational first grade students was analyzed to study the relationship between cognitive development and the types of case relationships produced. Each child's language was analyzed for eight noun/verb relationships, including state, process, action, experience, location,…

Educational research in Australia is minimal, according to the author. And yet the need for improved instruction to reach poor and reluctant readers compares in seriousness with the needs in the United States and Great Britain. It is recommended that research should place less emphasis on comparative evaluation of teaching methods and an increased…

Examines the role of metalinguistic abilities in the initial stages of learning to read. Indicates that children's ability to acquire low-level metalinguistic skills depends in part on their level of operativity, and that phonological and syntactic awareness play more important roles in beginning reading than does pragmatic awareness. (JK)