The nature of a specific spoken language as well as its orthography and the close relation between these two characteristics may influence phonemic awareness development (Durgunoglu & Öney, 1999). In this respect, oral language proficiency of bilingual and monolingual children appears to have an influence on enhancing their phonological…

"Ladders to Literacy" is a supplemental early literacy curriculum composed of 60 activities designed to develop children's print/book awareness, metalinguistic awareness, and oral language skills. The "Ladders to Literacy" activities can be implemented in a variety of early childhood settings and adapted for children with…

Assessment of spontaneous language samples for word-finding characteristics of language-disordered (N=28) and non-disordered (N=28) 7- to 12-year-olds indicated that non-disordered subjects produced significantly more total verbalizations and a greater modified mean length of utterance score than the subjects with word-finding problems. (CB)

Longitudinal studies of the application of a paraphrasing model to 18- to 28-month-olds indicated that mean length of utterance was significantly correlated with realized and paraphrased frequencies of several linguistic items in the subjects' corpora. The model was productive for examining children's corpora of speech and the linguistic…

Eight preschool children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 30 nonimpaired children were selected on the basis of specified mean length of utterance (MLU) ranges and compared on word class production. The high-MLU and low-MLU groups of SLI children could not be empirically differentiated based on their word class profiles, whereas the…

Fourteen Mother-Infant pairs were studied at three, six, and nine months to determine whether mothers simplify speech during the second half of the infant's first year and whether speech adjustment influences later language acquisition by infants. A mother's mean length of utterance (MLU) was predictive of later language development by her infant.…

When lexical availability was manipulated through discourse support and word frequency for 40 target nouns, measurement of effects on length, complexity, order of mention, and fluency of 4- to 8-year-olds' utterances showed that the number and length of responses containing the target word varied with age, word frequency, and discourse support…

A 20-minute videotape sample was obtained of the language interactions between 20 Down syndrome children (ages 38 to 107 months) and their mothers during informal playtime. Linguistic utterances of mothers and children were coded according to the following language categories: query, declarative, imperative, performative, feedback, imitation,…

Maternal language directed to 21 nonhandicapped, 21 Down syndrome, and 19 language impaired preschool children was examined. The three groups (all Caucasian and middle-class) were matched in mean length of utterance (MLU) and in developmental skills as measured on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale. Mother-child language interaction was…

Within the purview of a Chapter One Basic Program, this practicum initiated a 3-month intervention in oral language development for minority group first grade students with language differences and delayed speech who attended Gove Elementary School, Belle Glade, Florida, Goals for students included extension of mean length of utterance (MLU), and…