Investigates the relationship between bilingualism and metalinguistic awareness in Puerto Rican Spanish- and English-speaking children. Findings indicate that native language proficiency, as well as the degree of bilingualism, affect metalinguistic awareness, and that these effects interacted with the types of items in the metalinguistic tasks.…

Longitudinal data regarding three children's learning of English as a second language in a classroom setting support the hypothesis that the distribution of grammatical variants in learner speech is sensitive to linguistic context. Results suggest that the learners acquired the target language variants in "pronoun contexts" before "noun contexts."…

Compares the use of the English verbs "say" and "tell" and the Hebrew verbs "amar" and "siper" and then examines the degree of correspondence between "say" and "amar" and between "tell" and "siper." (CB)

Provided is an analysis of Turtle Geometry using van Hiele levels of development and understanding. The author also relates a language use framework, suggested by the work of Fry (1982), to the language activities of Turtle Geometry. Research supporting the analysis is discussed. (RH)

Videotapes of four mother-child dyads and diaries kept by the mothers, showed that there was a strong relationship between the children's initial use of words and the most frequently occurring use of these words by the mothers. It was also found that, although the majority of children's first words were context-bound, a significant number were…

A modeling experiment, conducted to determine if children benefit from observing speech not addressed to them in discovering the use of first and second pronouns, suggested that children even less than two years of age can attend to and learn from speech not addressed to them. (Author/CB)

Reviews recent studies concerning the acquisition of gender systems of different languages and the development of the mass/count distinction in English, focusing on evaluation of the early formal learning approach. (CB)

A study of English as a second language students' generalization of second-language learning showed that maximal generalization of learning took place from structures that were typologically more marked to those structures that were typologically less marked, and not the reverse. (Author/CB)

Describes the development of a program to help British secondary school students enrich their German instruction through opportunities to make practical use of the language in a commercial or industrial context. (CB)

Investigates current generic referent usage among 1529 public school children in grades 3-12. Indicates that there was an overall relationship between referent usage and gender role orientation, with more use of nontraditional referents among students who projected themselves in nontraditional occupational roles. (JK)

Recent changes in French grammatical and spelling conventions not generally known in North America are outlined, including instances of gender and number agreement, plurals of hyphenated words, articles, numerical adjectives, indefinites, verb forms, and accent marks. (MSE)

Discusses teaching vocabulary when students do not know the words nor the concepts they represent. (SRT)

A study correlating Nelson-Denny Reading Test scores with American College Testing Program Assessments (ACT) indicates that reading skill can be predicted accurately from the ACT social studies reading and English usage subtests. (MSE)

Discusses three principles germane to the idea that writing is a response to its function, compares school writing with home writing, and suggests specific functions of writing that are frequently used in classrooms. (DF)

Considers the historical background and the demographical characteristics of those residents of St. Augustine, Florida, who are descended from the city's original Spanish and Minorcan population. Included are a list and analysis of words found in the English dialect which represent the lexical vestiges of colonial Florida Spanish. (SED)