Examined topic discourse skills in pre-operational level 2- to 6-year-olds (N=30) interacting with their mothers during free play. The results suggested a complex picture of children's management of discourse as it relates to topic and mothers' continuing role in facilitating their children's discourse skills. (Author/CB)

Today's civil rights debate is clouded by ambiguities of language. The following frequently misused words are clarified in the text so the issues can be properly addressed: 1) segregation; 2) desegregation; 3) minority group; 4) civil rights; 5) compensatory; 6) statistical disparities; and 7) racist. (PS)

Investigates the effects of reading a series-format, many-volumed story to disadvantaged first graders. Results indicate that children who had been read to outscored children in the control classes on measures of decoding, reading comprehension, and active use of language. (SRT)

Explains the importance of competence in standard American English in a developmental writing curriculum and reviews several theories of basic writing instruction. (EL)

Describes the results of a remedial program provided to an adult subject who had incurred aphasia and alexia as a result of a series of strokes. (FL)

Outlines history of Spanish colonial policies toward Southern Peruvian Quechua and points out those issues under debate concerning the indigenous languages. The central issue of the "Andean language debate" continues to be whether or not the Quechua have a right to exist as a separate community. (SL)

Suggests that teachers examine the assets of natural language in children's homes for implications for language instruction at school. Discusses a children's story that can be interpreted as an analogy with instructional implications for creating natural language contexts in the classroom. (HTH)

To teach reading, teachers should take a greater account of the place of language, its use, and its place in each child's reading development. Advocates stimulating children's oral and written awareness by usage; by reading to and with children; by writing for, to, and with them; and by involving children in books, stories, and in the sense of…

Explores specific classroom language used by students for whom English is a second language. (HOD)

Suggests that there needs to be a notable shift in teaching practice in the direction of providing more opportunities for pupils to engage in exploratory talk in nonthreatening situations. (DF)

Studies the gender-neutral use of "he" and "his" in first, third, and fifth graders and college students according to a modified version of a task developed by Moulton et al. (1978). Also uses a task involving a fictitious, gender-neutral occupation (a wudgemaker) to test third and fifth graders for possible effects of gender-related pronoun use…

Examines the language of writing groups at fifth, eighth, and eleventh grade levels to determine what students say when they critique one another's work. Analysis of idea units revealed that the highest proportion focused on the content of writing. The rubric for coding ideas is appended. (HOD)

Describes some of the strategies of repetition and metaphor used by Black American novelist Richard Wright, as a model that students can adopt in their own writing, both for generating ideas and for revising them. Appendixes include various drafts of an interview statement by Wright. (HTH)

Describes a study which attempts to place the problem of second language learning and use by bilingual children into a framework of double socialization through the analysis of mother-child and peer group interaction. Ukrainian and Greek second generation mothers and their children aged 5-6 years were observed in four sessions. (SED)

Presents a study of foreigner talk (FT) in a minority language (Welsh) in a bilingual community and describes some of the most prominent features of Welsh FT. FT is defined as a simple form of a language used by native speakers to communicate with non-proficient speakers of the language. (SED)