Examines how children's beliefs about word meanings may affect their use of contrastive linguistic information in the input of word learning. Two separate studies are discussed that involve how three- and four-year-old children handled new word meanings after exposure to novel terms. (58 references) (GLR)

Results of three investigations of the development of word definitions indicated that younger childrens' definitions, including use or lack of use of superordinate categorical terms, fell short of adult informativeness, while, by age 10, children generally met such criteria in their definitions. (Author/CB)

Reconsiders the predominant views on the acquisition of kinship terms. Topics discussed include: (1) kinship and the ontogenesis of logic; (2) kinship and semantic development; (3) the language learner as naive theorist; (4) development and domain specificity; and (5) an alternative approach to kinship. (RJC)

The article offers teachers suggestions on ways to instruct elementary students in the vocabulary of mathematics. It gives examples of math difficulties at the elementary school level, math difficulties related to vocabulary, and math difficulties related to problem solving. (DB)

A course for Business German teaches strategies of textual analysis to develop in the students the reading skills necessary to recognize unfamiliar vocabulary and concepts by using known vocabulary. The course is designed both for students of German without a business background and for business students without knowledge of German. (DJD)

When children produce regularizations like "comed," not all verbs are equally liked to be regularized. It is argued that one predictor is which vowels are present in the base form vs. the past tense form, and that regularizations are likely when the base vowel is dominant and unlikely when the past tense vowel is dominant. (Contains 25…

In a study of psycholinguistic factors, 47 students' learning of German under repetition, keyword, or "own" strategy conditions was investigated. Native-to-foreign learning is shown to be easier the more the foreign language words conform to the phonological and orthographic patterns of the native language; the relationships are less…

Finds that teachers used more than one activity to teach new words but typically did not use activities identified in the research literature as effective; teachers' stated purposes for vocabulary instruction were congruent with the requirements of the basal reading series used; and teachers defined the importance of vocabulary knowledge in terms…

This study of 2.5 and 3.5 year olds indicated that children of this age do not know many names for solid substances but can be taught names for them; that children represent the names as mass nouns and possibly adjectives; and that there is development of children's nonlinguistic knowledge of substances between the ages of 2.5 and 3 years. (TJQ)

Eight 20- to 26-month-old children were exposed to 4 novel nouns in a game context over several weeks to determine whether, when, and in what ways the children would use them beyond their original linguistic forms. The majority were productive in their use of the nouns, indicating that the grammatical category for noun is operational by age 2.…

Presents five activities that will strengthen students' understanding of the properties, vocabulary, and concepts of geometric shapes. The activities teach concepts about angles, squares and triangles, and number theory. (TM)

This article presents a number of methods, including context-related activities, board games, and filler exercises, developed in the Russian classroom, designed for stimulating vocabulary learning and retention. (43 references) (JL)

The purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between language and interactive strategies used by children with peers in a shared activity. The subjects were 20 middle-class Italian children, 10 male and 10 female, between the ages of 4 and 5, who were in their last year of preschool. (CFM)

This study, with 19 young children (36-76 months old) with developmental delays, in the first stage of language learning, found that the children used more frequent language and more diverse vocabulary in routine than in nonroutine situations. The protocol for parent identification of routines is appended. (DB)

Presents a definition matching exercise for students. Offers a list of 20 law-related terms and accompanying definitions. (SG)