This study examined the correspondence between spoken English and Australasian Signed English when used simultaneously by four teachers of deaf Australian students. The teachers were more than 90 percent accurate in reproducing on their hands what they were saying but at some cost to the oral aspects of the simultaneous communication. (Author/JDD)

This paper describes content analysis as a data analysis technique useful for examining written or verbal communication within early intervention. The article outlines the use of referential or thematic recording units derived from interview data, identifies procedural guidelines, and addresses issues of rigor and validity. (Author/JDD)

Reports on functions of preschoolers' literacy-based verbal exchanges in a print-enriched play environment. Content of four and five year olds' play behavior was systematically analyzed. Results suggest that children's collaborative engagement in literacy through play may have an important influence on their developing understanding of written…

Reviews three studies that focused on ways in which social interactions within the family support literacy acquisition. Suggests that parents' most important contributions to their children's literacy development may come through language interactions, such as storytelling and interactions that foster vocabulary development, rather than through…

Compares pictorial and verbal rating scales as measures of music preference opinions. Examines internal consistency and test-retest reliability of each type of scale, the overall preference scores generated through the use of each to measure preference for the same music stimuli, and student preferences for each type after using them. (DSK)

Explores the ability of children to use discourse markers (DMs) as indicators of register, examining the distribution of various DMs in the role-play speech of Spanish-dominant bilingual elementary students as they played with puppets representing several characters with different social relationships. Children used DMs to specifically mark…

A case study of the conversational development in a 7-year-old girl with profound deafness explored the relationship between mode of inquiry and findings resulting from using qualitative research methodology. Findings led to the discovery of the child's language competencies and revealed contextual features that contributed to conversational…

Introduces a descriptive system of analysis of peer-group interaction that consists of a three-dimensional analysis of peer-group interaction by focusing on the functions of verbal interaction and the nature of cognitive processing and social processing. Twenty 12-year-old students from one Finnish classroom participated in the study. Empirical…

Presents new evidence for the view that specific language impairment (SLI) involves a syntactic-feature deficit within non-evident grammar. The data involve morphological case and its interaction with verbal inflection. (Author/VWL)

Assesses the relationship between homesickness and self-disclosure in students at the start of their first semester and after six weeks. Finds that homesickness declines during the semester as level of self-disclosure increases. Results show importance of socially mediated benefits of self-disclosure during this transition. (Author/JDM)

The vocalizations and speech production of 20 infants with hearing impairments were examined at three age levels: between 5-13 months, 2-5 years, and 5-10 years. Degree of hearing loss had a significant and moderately strong relationship with speech outcome at the second and third age levels. (Contains extensive references.) (Author/CR)

Three young adults with moderate to severe mental retardation were taught conversation skills using task analysis and cognitive strategies training procedures. Results show that the participants generalized the conversation skills learned under the cognitive strategies condition and that the cognitive strategies training allowed more normalized…

Functional analysis of destructive behavior of a four-year-old boy with autism and oppositional defiant disorder was able to delineate the specific form of verbal attention that was responsible for behavioral maintenance. Treatment based on the analysis reduced the behavior to near-zero levels. (DB)

Reviews Faerch and Kasper's model (1983) of communication strategies and demonstrates that it is too rigid to have a sound psychological foundation. The article argues for more emphasis on studying learners' strategies from a discourse analyst's perspective and touches on the interrelation between language, culture, and personality in verbal…

Examines the cross-linguistic influence of native language topic-prominence in shaping and accenting the written English discourse produced by Chinese learners. The article endeavors to demonstrate that this interlingual discourse does not meet the criteria for adequate coherence in written English discourse. (22 references) (Author/CK)