Maternal scaffolding and four-year-old children's linguistic skills were examined during toy play. Participants were 21 American-English monolingual and 21 Thai monolingual mother-child dyads. Results revealed cross-cultural differences in conversation styles between the two groups. American dyads adopted a high-elaborative style relative to Thai…

The natural musicality so often present in children's singing can begin to fade as the focus of a lesson shifts to the process of reading and writing conventional notation symbols. Approaching the study of music from a linguistic perspective preserves the pace and flow that is inherent in spoken language and song. SongWorks teaching practices…

In this piece I explore the concept of 'growth' in English teaching. Starting with John Dixon's 'growth' model, I argue that, by re-imagining his ideas in current contexts, practitioners might re-focus and re-invigorate the priorities of English teaching. Dominant conceptions of 'growth' are explored, along with their influence on teacher working…

This article examines the role of linguistic and sociolinguistic factors in the second language (L2) acquisition of Spanish vibrants. The data consist of 2 sets of recordings from 37 students enrolled in a Spanish pronunciation class. The statistical program VarbRul was used to analyze 7,597 samples. The vibration (simple or multiple) and the…

This study examines how novice foreign language (FL) writers develop their genre awareness, linguistic knowledge, and writing competence in a genre-based writing course that incorporates email-writing tasks. To define genre, the study draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) that sees language as a resource for making meaning in a particular…

The research methodology of this study is at least as important as the actual findings. For certain types of information seeking, directed conversations, or interviews, seem most desirable. Yet, although such conversations are easy to carry on with teachers, they are difficult to manage with 6-year-old children, especially when the interviewer is…

Many classics in children's literature have metaphoric structures that enhance the structure of the plot. Metaphor is not an added frill to creative writing, nor is it the private province of poets. It is a necessary part of everyday language. One viewpoint on metaphor can be found in studies on child language acquisition. Children do use…

The teaching activities presented in this document have been selected from a series of language study units prepared for teachers by the Queensland Language Development Project task force as part of the Studytalk project. They focus on inquiring into some of the varieties of language most accessible to teachers and students. In each of the three…

Children's speech styles vary considerably, ranging along a continuum from formal to informal, in the various educational and social settings they encounter in school. Teachers who see their role as preparing children to fill social roles will be aware of the speech styles that children use and will accept varying speech styles as appropriate to…

A curriculum rationale and model which meet the constraints of what is known of communicatively-based language teaching/learning are presented. The curricula prepares non-English speaking students for higher educational experiences in the U.S. Current program rationales, communicative and interactive teaching, and issues in curriculum design are…

The many ways in which children use language are examined in this paper, and classroom implications are outlined. The first part of the paper discusses such topics as young children's focus on meaning in language, teachers' tendency to examine language in terms of form rather than meaning, and the importance of the student/teacher interaction…

Language skill attrition refers to the loss of any language or portion of a language whether it be the declining use of mother tongue skills, the replacement of one language by another in language contact situations, the deterioration of language in the neurologically impaired or elderly, or the death of whole languages. In this paper, language…

A series of investigations studied dimensions of individual differences in elementary and secondary school students in ability and "style" in speaking, writing, and other verbal performances; the relations of these dimensions to measured personality characteristics; early childhood and home background factors in these variables; and the relative…

A study of two public school kindergarten classes in New York City, heterogeneously grouped according to ethnic origin and social background, revealed that the maturity and fluency of the children's language varied according to the type of classroom activity in which they were engaged. From observational recordings of teacher-class interaction, it…

Noting the close relationship among language, thought, culture, personality, and self awareness, anthropological linguistics acknowledges the powerful and real function language styles play in human life, the close attachment between the individual and his natural manner of speech, and the sensitivity that surrounds an individual's attachment to…