Because listening is a vital part of language learning, listening skills should be developed as a learning mode. Pre-listening skills should be taught just as pre-reading skills are taught. Children in command of the auditory perceptual abilities which contribute most to listening will transfer these abilities to increasingly difficult listening…

Twenty children (10 from a Day Care Center and 10 from a Head Start Center) were administered a 28-item, parallel form language comprehension task. The method utilized concrete materials (i.e., puppets and other familiar objects, spoon, flower, ball) which subjects manipulated when presented with sentences of 7 different grammatical constructions.…

This unannotated bibliography lists over 400 works, published between 1924 and 1971, dealing with the phonology of about 30 languages whose speakers are frequently taught English. For these languages, the bibliography includes as complete as possible a listing of studies within the generative framework. Where the coverage by generative treatments…

Within the realm of psycholinguistics there is a need to investigate linguistic performance based on the generative transformational concept of linguistic competence, i.e., based on the speaker-listener's knowledge of his language. Psycholinguistics must determine how underlying knowledge is related to overt performance. The nominalization and…

The processes by which the young child recognizes and regenerates some invariant and organizational properties of language are discussed. In these processes the child conjoins and contrasts recurrent segments--perhaps a recurrent word--of the messages presented to him. After repeated exposure to messages containing a common segment, the child…

This study used a variation of the two-child communication situation in order to determine in what way, and how successfully, a small set of schoolrelated relational concepts would be communicated by inner-city elementary school black children. Included for comparative purposes was a test of comprehension of the standard version of the concepts.…

The language teacher must provide a variety of activities in the classroom in which the student can use the second language in unrehearsed, novel situations requiring, on his part, inventiveness, resourcefulness and self-assurance. There should be less emphasis on linguistic accuracy and more on truly spontaneous and creative language. In the…

The theoretical linguistic distinction between assertion and presupposition was empirically tested with two groups of subjects, young children acquiring English as their first language and adults acquiring English as a second language. (Author)

The linguistic performance of four Hispanic bilingual fifth- and sixth-grade students perceived to have limited language abilities in English and Spanish was studied. Results indicate that the organization of instruction limited students' abilities to show their competence and that teachers interpreted this as a lack of conceptual ability. (SLD)

Reports on a longitudinal study on the effects of students' early linguistic development and family background on test performance when the students reach the end of their compulsory schooling years. Finds a considerable degree of continuity between early language development and later examination performance. (CFR)

Based on interviews with teachers and students, the paper looks at some of the ways in which teachers' use of English as a medium of instruction sometimes frustrates the students' learning efforts instead of facilitating them. While options for change may include adopting mother tongue as an alternative medium, there are theoretical reasons for…

This report offers a synthesis of a Special Issues Analysis Center report based on a focus group that studied active learning and its implications for limited English proficient (LEP) students. Active learning is defined as the level of engagement by the student in the instructional process; it implies the development of a community of learners…

Investigations using English have shown that a number of linguistic constructions associated with reporting verbs, and verbs concerning plans, present comprehension difficulties to children over the age of five. The corresponding constructions in Greek involved ambiguity appreciation, and tests of monoglots and bilinguals indicated that a…

Recent studies on schema theory and other concepts related to reading comprehension are discussed in this paper. Noting that the psycholinguistic model of reading views reading as a process of predicting meaning based on the reader's prior knowledge of language, the paper describes recent research that has led to a definition of reading…

This report presents some of the findings of several years research on the relations between the non-standard English used by Negro speakers in various urban ghetto areas (NNE) and standard English (SE). The immediate subject is the status of the copula and auxiliary "be" in NNE. The approach to the problem combines the methods of…