Cumulating evidence suggests that the establishment of high-quality phonological representations is the "cognitive precursor" that facilitates the acquisition of language (spoken, signed, and written). The authors present two studies that contrast the nature of bilingual profoundly deaf children's phonological representations derived…

Purpose: Research has established that African American (AA) children are lagging behind other children in their reading skills. A number of factors have been proposed to account for the literacy gap; however no single factor has entirely explained this disparity. This investigation examined the appropriateness of the Gray Oral Reading Test-Fourth…

This paper is intended for early childhood caregivers--teachers in centers and those caring for children in homes. It is intended to help caregivers learn more about how children develop the ability to "use words" to communicate their thoughts and needs and ask questions, and to "understand language they hear" in conversations and in books. Why is…

Research indicates a strong relationship between phonological awareness and reading success. Phonemic intervention programs clearly show the benefits of explicitly teaching phonological awareness skills. Phonological awareness skills vary in nature and degree of difficulty and appear to follow a developmental progression. This study examined a…

Based on an examination of research on the language acquisition of children, the articles in this book are organized into three interrelated sections. Section one, "Language and the Young Language Learner," focuses on what and how children learn as they begin to acquire their language. The topic of language differences is also explored. Articles…

A review of literature relating to the use of Hawaiian pidgin and standard English and their relationship to school achievement was undertaken in response to concerns regarding state educational policy for language use and proficiency. The research reviewed includes pidgin and creole studies, second language acquisition research, and studies of…

This study explores the relationship between different home and school variables and reading achievement in bilingual children. The subjects of the study are 130 first- and third-grade children attending bilingual programs. Language proficiency and dominance tests were administered to the children and a questionnaire was sent to their parents. The…

An experiment involving two groups of 193 beginning secondary school students of French, German, and Spanish considers the instructional value of the electronic classroom as an alternative to the conventional language laboratory for the presentation of exercise materials. Experimental design hypotheses state that since more practice is possible…

One hundred native-born, disadvantaged black children were the subject of this study which proposed the following hypotheses: (1) Subjects proficient in spoken language ability would achieve greater gains in reading ability than those deficient in spoken language ability; however, the former group would vary negligibly among sub-groups in reading…

THREE GROUPS OF DISADVANTAGED MEXICAN-AMERICAN CHILDREN WERE TESTED TO DETERMINE CHANGES IN READING ACHIEVEMENT BETWEEN SECOND AND THIRD GRADE. DURING THE SCHOOL YEAR, AN ORAL-AURAL ENGLISH GROUP OF 102 CHILDREN WERE GIVEN INTENSIVE ENGLISH LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION WHILE AN ORAL-AURAL SPANISH GROUP OF 67 CHILDREN WERE GIVEN INTENSIVE SPANISH LANGUAGE…

Investigates second grade children's ability to understand the use of deictic terms (devices in language that convey information about the communicative situation) in three types of tasks: oral language, written language, and picture selection, and concludes that the difficulty of a word with deictic content depends largely upon the discourse…

Reports on a study that investigated what constitutes metaphor and simile for sixth- and eighth-grade children. Discusses the implications of the findings for reading and language arts curriculum development and instruction. (FL)

Based on transcribed conversations with black children in kindergarten and the intermediate grades, a study was devised to determine whether black urban children from lower socioeconomic areas speak a systematic, consistent form of nonstandard English, and if so, to provide a syntactical analysis of the dialect of nonstandard speakers. Speech…

This paper summarizes the findings of three studies used to develop a language assessment instrument and to explore the relationships between language, cognitive development, and reading achievement in poor children. A sentence repetition task provided scores for function word omission, function word correct and reconstruction word correct. These…

The extended effects of two instructional approaches, the Coordinated Basal Language Arts Approach and the Integrated Experience Approach to Communication, on pupils' language development at the second- and third-grade levels were investigated. Original subjects were 669 first graders who were pretested for readiness and intelligence. Of these,…