With increasing pressures being placed on early childhood teachers to provide academic programs, many are turning away from programs that foster pretend play. This study examined two contrasting approaches to teaching preschool children and considered their effects on children's linguistic and social abilities. One of the teaching approaches…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. Among the topics covered in the 31 titles are the following: the oral English syntax of bilingual Indian children in Manitoba, Canada; linguistic style shifting in black English; oral language assessment by sentence repetition;…

Noting that classroom communication is a central issue in school systems, because spoken language is the medium by which much teaching takes place, this book investigates classroom discourse within the framework of applied linguistics, and discusses research drawn from elementary, secondary and postsecondary classrooms. The first section deals…