This book captures the diversity and richness of writing as it relates to different forms of abilities, skills, competencies, and expertise. Psychologists, educators, researchers, and practitioners in neighboring areas are interested in exploring how writing develops and in what manner this development can be fostered, but they lack a handy,…

Describes a follow-up study of 25 boys who had been diagnosed with Specific Expressive Language Delay (SELD) at 24 to 30 months of age. At three to four years, half of the boys continued to exhibit poor expressive language skills, suggesting that young children diagnosed with SELD are at considerable risk for continuing language problems. (33…

The author reflects upon some of the similarities and differences that exist across 25 years of research and practice in language learning disabilities and provides examples of how definitions of and perceptions about language, learning, and reading disabilities are still evolving. The author also evaluates language intervention approaches then…

The literature on spelling strategies of normal and learning disabled children is reviewed, and suggestions for the classroom teacher are offered. After a brief examination of this century's attempts to improve the basic school speller, attention is directed to M. Halle and N. Chomsky's research on the English sound system and Chomsky's theory of…

The linguistic development of 42 learning disabled students 10-16 years old was examined. Responses were elicited to five linguistic structures, including the distinction between "ask" and "tell", pronominal restriction, and the minimum distance principle. Data were analyzed in terms of three groups based on Verbal and Performance differentials on…

Compares and contrasts the abilities of normal and learning disabled students to abstract spelling patterns in the course of their acquisition of spelling skills. The performance of the learning disabled was significantly below that of the normal students. In addition, error analysis indicates that the responses of the learning disabled spellers…

Intended as a guide for reviewing the literature on the study of exceptional children, this book presents the authors' contentions that exceptional children may be more clearly understood through a study of language development and that language growth and language development represent an important developmental area which separates these…

The shift from viewing reading as primarily a perceptual process to viewing it as primarily a linguistic process, combined with the consideration of reading failure as not one but many disabilities, formed the basis for the assumption that there exists a duo-symbiosis between reading and speech and between speech and word-finding. The development…

The language across the curriculum approach explored in this book implies the restructuring of curricula away from so-called "coverage" of content and toward creation of opportunities for learning in discussions, games, and in-class writing projects. Following an introduction and overview in chapter one, chapter two summarizes and…

A collection of essays on first and second language proficiency from the fields of psychology and linguistics includes the following: "Modeling and Assessing Language Proficiency" (John H. A. L. de Jong, Ludo Verhoeven); "The Construct of Grammar in Early Language Development" (Folkert Kuiken); "Dimensions in Grammatical Proficiency" (Wim H. J.…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 20 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) psycholinguistic abilities in American Sioux Indian children; (2) cohesion in verbals of scientific and technical English; (3) teacher-child discourse…