Observational learning is a successful method for improving writing skills in various genres. We explore effects of a five lesson intervention series based on peer observation. Fifty-five Swedish 5th-grade students aged 10-12 years followed this intervention programme. The students watched short film clips with peers working with texts. Each…

The M.A. level in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in Iran aims at training qualified persons for teaching English at universities or institutions of higher education and also fulfilling the needs of the society regarding experts in the field of research in language teaching issues, translating different English texts into Persian or…

Investigates a strategy for language acquisition adopted by one child and the usefulness of imitation in supporting that strategy. Examination of recordings made of naturally occurring conversations between the child and his parents indicated that he exploited imitation fully in order to acquire language. Imitative utterances surpassed spontaneous…

This study compared relative effectiveness of imitative treatment and conversational recast treatment in 7 children (ages 55-79 months) with language impairment and 7 controls. Target acquisition was faster under conversational recast treatment for both groups. Language-impaired children learned grammatical structures as efficiently as…

Attempts to determine whether children can use social-pragmatic cues to determine "what kind" of referent, object, or action an adult intends to indicate with a novel word. Doubts that children assume that a novel word refers to whatever nameless object is present. Suggests that lexical acquisition rests fundamentally on children's…

Examines whether knowledge of functional properties of a referent for a new name influences children's first guesses about whether that name refers to an object or a substance. Suggests that children do not rely on a single source of information, but rather draw on various kind of information, including perceptual characteristics of the entities…

Attempts to identify deficits in object knowledge specific to the autistic syndrome. Examines the correspondence between sensorimotor and play behaviors and language in mentally retarded and normal children. Determines whether these correspondences are different for autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children.(Author/AS)

Early childhood education specialists in the United States can learn from the Reggio Emilia experience. This document details five aspects of Reggio Emilia practices in the following sections: (1) "The Contribution of Graphic Languages to Young Children's Project Work," discussing how children are encouraged to use graphic languages and…

Thirteen subjects (aged 5:6 to 6:6) with language disorders were given elicited imitation and spontaneous language tasks, and their performance was compared among and within subjects. The two procedures produced significantly correlated results for some children but not for others. Analysis of specific syntactic forms also produced variable…