This paper discusses five language roots of reading: phonology, syntax, semantics, short-term and long-term memory, and auditory segmenting. Teachers are urged to focus early school experiences toward development of these five skills to reduce the incidence of reading difficulties. Specific teaching suggestions are offered. (Author/DB)

Various theories of learning for the categories "count noun" and "mass noun" are compared. It is argued that children assign words to these categories on the basis of intuitions arising from perception that are relevant to Macnamara's (1986) definitions of the categories. (39 references) (GLR)

Reports on a four-month study of deaf education programs conducted in Sweden and Denmark in March of 1990, and discusses three aspects of language learning involving deaf children's learning sign language as a first language, Swedish as a second language, and hearing parents' and teachers' learning of Swedish Sign Language. (14 references)

Deaf high school students participating in an oral history project interview deaf adults, collect oral and signed histories on videotape, and translate the American Sign Language text into written English captions. The project's goals are to help deaf students build self-esteem, improve English writing skills, and become acquainted with role…

Two studies are reported in which the following theory is tested: the agrammatic sentence form that is observed in the spontaneous speech of Broca's aphasics is attributable to the selection of elliptical syntactic structures in which the slots for many of the closed-class words that appear in complete sentences are lacking. (54 references)…

Empirical evidence is presented in favor of a theory that attributes the delay in the acquisition of the passive to young children's ability to accomplish nonlocal assignment of features. Two experiments testing monolingual Spanish-speaking children's knowledge of the passive are discussed and analyzed in light of the theory of Argument-chain…

Verbal precocity at 20 months of age did not predict children's later precocious reading. Frequency of story reading in the home at 24 months predicted children's language ability at 2.5 and 4.5 years and, along with literacy instruction, predicted knowledge of print conventions at 4.5. (BC)

In response to Sawyer (EC 602 748), this article provides evidence from cognitive neuropsychological case reports that does not support the strong metalinguistic hypothesis, which contends that explicit, conscious mastery of the relationship between phonology and orthography is a necessary (and perhaps sufficient) precondition for the development…

This case study examined the effects of a Maori language and culture immersion preschool program on a preschooler's English and Maori language usage at home. School and home observations revealed the importance of the child's role in acquiring bilingual expertise, the presence of complementary activities at home, and shared cultural commitments.…

A multifaceted model to promote peer play was implemented with play groups including 3 children (ages 6-8) with autism, resulting in decreased isolate play and collateral gains in social play, and decreased stereotyped object play and collateral gains in functional object play. Advances in play behaviors were generalized and were accompanied by…

Studies employed detailed discourse analysis techniques to examine Montreal nursing students' comprehension of texts in both their first and second languages. The results suggest that the use of second-language production tends to underestimate and distort second-language comprehension, at least at intermediate levels of second-language…

Effective instructional strategies used to teach language skills to 24 elementary aged students with autism or moderate mental retardation included the use of choral responding; the use of student-to-student responding; the frequent rotation of materials while teaching 2 to 3 concepts; and the use of random, unpredictable trials for student…

Examines language development in preschool children, focusing on teacher-child interactions that can help facilitate language development. Suggests that teachers, parents, and other adults need to respond to children's conversation, elaborate on children's language, and ask children questions. Argues that the best way to facilitate language…

Results of a study of children's performance on pseudohomophone naming, similarity judgment, and lexical decision suggest that training in pinyin, a system for spelling Chinese words in Latin letters, helps child readers pronounce unfamiliar words, and makes them more responsive to visual information but less precise in word recognition.…

Examines the adaptive nature of prolonged human cognitive immaturity through developmental research in metacognition, egocentricity, plasticity, the speed of information processing, and language acquisition. Discusses the consequences of viewing children's immature cognition as adaptive for cognitive development and education. (Author/JB)