Beginning secondary students find it easier to express their understanding of scientific evidence verbally rather than in writing. Concludes that much work can be done to improve the critical nature of the dialog pupils enter into in their written work, thus making their level of procedural understanding more clear. Contains 27 references.…

This study compared spoken and written narratives of school-age children (N=20) with language learning disabilities (LLD) with chronological age (CA) and language-age (LA) peers. For the spoken summary, productivity measures and grammatical complexity were significantly lower for children with LLD than for CA children. Expository writing was…

Presents results from a teaching effectiveness survey of alumni. Indicates alumni believe that good instructors should demonstrate effective preparation, interest in course material and students, availability to students outside of class, effective pedagogy, practical application, classroom interaction with students, sociability, and a high level…

Comments on a set of five analyses that all examine the same data (the discourse of a problem-based learning group in medicine). Argues that each of the analyses is representative not only of a research tradition, but also of a distinct research language and, as such, can be analyzed on the basis of the expressive potential of that language. (SR)

Analyzes the production and perception of illocutionary forms. Using a semantic neutralization procedure, the performance of children (5, 7, and 9 years old) and adults was compared in two experiments focusing on prosodic representations in production and perception tasks. (Author/JL)

Argues that mastery of modal particles is important for interpersonal aspects of language development. The article outlines the difficulty of learning and teaching German modal particles with regard to the theoretical explication. The study shows how a teaching program improved initially poor comprehension and production skills in the area of…

This discussion of speech and language development in individuals with nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD) reviews NLD assets, deficits, and dynamics; the white matter model; manifestations of NLD in neurological dysfunction; psycholinguistic dimensions of NLD in terms of language content, form, and use; developmental considerations in NLD; and…

Describes a teacher's experience as a speaker and representative of the religious right at a school board meeting to resolve conflicts over what is suitable reading material for school children. Reviews her personal involvement in the controversy, the nature of the controversy, and the possibility of dialog between the two sides. (TB)

Suggests that people think about information as a process rather than a substance. Argues that in order to do this, schools need to slow down and do less, but do it better. Asserts that too much content coverage gets in the way of developing critical thinking skills. (NB)

Findings from observations of 64 8- and 9-year olds show that the use of exploratory talk, talking in which joint reasoning is made explicit, can improve group reasoning and that this exploratory talk can be taught and can transfer between educational contexts. Teaching exploratory talk also improved results on a nonverbal reasoning test. (SLD)

Compared expressive language used by preschoolers when engaged at a classroom computer center with that used during free play. Found that mean lengths of utterance showed no significant differences in amount of language spoken, no matter the context. Found exceptions in which one student was more expressive at the computer, and three others were…

Discusses verbal strategies used by young children to express and construct a sense of togetherness. Presents the case study of one child, 3-5 years old, in his interactions with other children and teachers. Describes three general mechanisms for expressing togetherness: expression of common ground, of cooperation, and of care. (JPB)

Lip movements were examined across several repetitive speaking conditions (speech alone and speaking concurrently with a linguistic, cognitive, or visuomotor challenge task) in 20 young adults. Performance in these nonspeech activities was also compared between isolated tasks and concurrent speech conditions. Linguistic challenges resulted in…

A metalinguistic deficit in the awareness of phonological aspects of spoken language has long been assumed to be the single most important cause of reading failure among developmental dyslexics. Majority of this proposal's empirical support has come from examination of reading problems in irregular language like English and it's relation to the…

Despite intensive work on language-brain relations, and a fairly impressive accumulation of knowledge over the last several decades, there has been little progress in developing large-scale models of the functional anatomy of language that integrate neuropsychological, neuroimaging, and psycholinguistic data. Drawing on relatively recent…