From the perspective of years in the classroom, Jago shares her journey of reflective teaching that led to a strong belief that all students need the "language of literature" incorporated into daily instruction. Having the vocabulary of intellectual thought at their disposal helps students think through complex issues and express their questions…

The current experiment investigated how sentential form-class expectancies influenced lexical-semantic priming within each hemisphere. Sentences were presented that led readers to expect a noun or a verb and the sentence-final target word was presented to one visual field/hemisphere for a lexical decision response. Noun and verb targets in the…

Background: Despite recent interest in relationships between maternal gesture and speech and communicative development in typically developing (TD) children, little work has examined either speech or gesture in mothers of children with Down's syndrome (DS). Aims: To compare aspects of speech and gesture production by mothers of children with DS…

Defines and evaluates the consequences brought about by the increase of Americanisms in the Spanish language. (Text is in Spanish.) (DS)

Analyzes the history and etymology of the Spanish idiom "al buen tuntun." (Text is in Spanish.) (DS)

The study compared the effectiveness of peer and adult models in teaching an expressive language task to four autistic boys (9-11 years old). Ss had well developed imitative repertoires and some spontaneous language. Using a BCBC design, counterbalanced across modeling conditions and replicated across Ss, autistic Ss were taught to respond to…

The study assessed the oral narrative abilities of 10 normal and 10 learning-disabled (LD) middle school children (11-12 years old). Narratives were assessed using A. Applebee's system for the development of story organization. The narratives were also examined for the specific components used within the stories themselves. Findings revealed…

Third part of a continued article. (SK)

A teacher training coordinator stresses the importance of developing gifted children's communication abilities and briefly describes two group dynamics activities ("Circle Partners" and "Think Pink") for building listening, interpretation and discussion skills. (LH)

Some Spanish nouns designating non-animate things may have either feminine or masculine gender. The reasons given for the choice of gender are many and varied. It is put forward that in some cases the masculine acts as a diminutive and the feminine as an augmentative. (Text is in Spanish.) (TL)

Examines children's strategies in language production. Focuses on how children in early stages of language acquisition talk about objects, spatial relations, and actions, and the extent to which they rely on general purpose terms in all three domains. (JMB)

Discusses the syntactic differences in expressing wishes or desires in Italian and Russian. (CFM)

Described are the purposes of the language story method, a technique designed to develop and expand expressive language in deaf children. (CL)

Discusses a way to introduce students to idioms and figurative expressions while stimulating their interest in literature. (MB)