This article begins by identifying that children have a spontaneous predilection for playing with language, engaging in poetic discourse even before their first poetry lesson. Although children's language play is relatively unresearched in the classroom, in a case study of two groups of pupils aged between 10 and 11, it was observed that children…

This article focuses on the language foundation for education. A brief overview of various linguistic theories as they relate to education are offered. The contrast between the functional, natural, self-generated, and contextually relevant characteristics of talk and writing are explored. (DF)

Explores ways teachers can teach attentive listening and makes suggestions for developing listening skills used in natural ways in the classroom. (FL)

Looks at research and practice in the area of idioms and offers suggestions for teaching them effectively. (FL)

Because students encounter a steady stream of new words in their reading, structural analysis--the ability to gain information about the meaning, pronunciation, and part of speech of new words from their prefixes, roots, and suffixes--is an important component of skilled reading. It follows, then, that effective reading instruction should include…

This report examines how the making of inferences plays a role in the comprehension of narratives. The report poses and discusses seven questions: What are inferences? What functions do they perform? What is required to make inferences? What processes are involved? What kinds of inferences are there? How can readers' inferences be assessed? Can…

Discusses story grammar and story schema. Demonstrates how two schema-based strategies--semantic webbing and the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity--can aid in improving comprehension. (FL)

While reading and writing are both language processes and a natural relationship between the two could be assumed, they have generally been studied and taught separately--one as a production process and the other as a reception process. There has recently been increased interest in the relationship in the education community. The source of this…

Six stages of a total communication intervention strategy to improve question comprehension skills in a profoundly hearing impaired subject (age 12) are described: (1) enhancing emergent skills; (2) manipulating wh-question forms; (3) increasing flexibility in wh-question responses; (4) developing questions in conversational context; (5) prompting…

Three issues were examined in a study of children's use of first language knowledge in acquiring a second language: (1) understanding of narratives, (2) the degree to which knowledge available in the child's first language is used in understanding second language input, and (3) the relationship between knowledge utilization in two languages as…

A total of 272 children participated in a study of the effectiveness of three support systems for cuing sixth grade students in interpreting the metaphoric language of poetry. The first system involved regular classroom teachers who applied their own verbal cuing, the second included external instructional support through media and the teachers'…

Noting that the media can be powerful instruments in the hands of creative teachers, this paper explores the use of media as instructional tools to promote growth in thinking and language processes (primarily reading and writing). The paper views media form and applies it to the interrelationship of experience, thought, and language. It proposes…

Semantic elaboration, a language-based mnemonic strategy, was taught to 15 students (aged five to nine years) with moderate learning difficulties over a six-month period, using pictures as stimuli. Among reported results was an improvement in overall performance on memorization of pairs of pictures. Generalization to items not used during teaching…

Attempting to present empathy as a vital ingredient of effective interpersonal listening, this paper first provides a brief historical tracing of the major trends in listening theory and research. This review then serves as a backdrop for a partial justification of an empathic listening emphasis that includes a clarification of some misconceptions…