This collection of resources was compiled by the Birth to Kindergarten students of Lenoir-Rhyne College (North Carolina) to provide the early childhood professional--whether a child care center director, early interventionist, teacher, family resource counselor, or program consultant--with ready, easy to use information to share with parents.…

Intended to respond to parents' questions relating to their children's language learning, this booklet discusses questions organized around three themes: (1) Learning the Basics; (2) Marking Testing and Reporting; and (3) Helping Children at Home. The first section, on basics, addresses such questions as: "When will my child learn to…

This paper describes a language-based, problem-solving socialization and sex education curriculum designed for individuals with developmental delays. The curriculum aims to increase the students' understanding of themselves socially, psychologically, and physically enabled to function more effectively in a mainstream society that is ever changing.…

The CHAT transcription standard of the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES), the world's largest computer archive of child language data, is critiqued. CHAT is being considered as a possible standard for the field of child language as a whole. It is argued that CHAT is biased toward three views that are no longer current in the field: (1)…

In a study of features that seem to be typical of children's conversations, 10 Finnish preschool children's conversations were videotaped and audiotaped over a period of 10 hours. The children were taped in conversation, play, fairy tale, and eating situations. Among the findings are that all children enjoy playing with language, but some initiate…

The study discusses an intervention program for three young Down's syndrome children who had shown communication problems with other children. A game situation was developed in which the Japanese children interacted among themselves and with adults. Rules were designed to provide a structured context for the game, and the rules were kept within…

This report describes an in-service education program offered to teachers at a rural northeastern Head Start program to help them assess children's overall development by looking at their level of language development. The program focused on the case conference, a forum in which coordinators, teachers, home visitors, and sometimes parents meet to…

This study investigated whether language context affects language choice in a Spanish-English bilingual infant from age 1;3 to 1;10. Most studies of child bilingualism assume that communicative competence occurs at a stage in language development after the onset of syntactic constructions, but this paper hypothesizes that once the child begins to…

A discussion of English native-language vocabulary acquisition in children takes a closer look at the assumption that vocabulary is learned by common association of word with event, focusing on the acquisition of verb meanings. The intuitive power of the view that words are learned by noticing real-world contingencies for their use is…

A discussion of English-speaking children's use of subjectless sentences contrasts the competence and performance explanations for the phenomenon. In particular, it reviews evidence indicating that the phenomenon does not reflect linguistic competence, but rather performance constraints. A tentative model of children's production is presented…

In this investigation of the relationships among selected aspects of normal language development, emerging metalinguistic skills, concepts about print, and literacy experiences, 19 children 3 years of age were given 4 tests of language development, 12 metalinguistic tasks measuring phonological awareness, word awareness and structural awareness,…

This longitudinal study looked at how communication developed in seven deaf infants (ages 6-18 months) with either deaf or hearing parents. The children were video- recorded in interactional settings with their parents in their home every second month. A parallel study was conducted with seven blind infants and three severely visually impaired…

There are descriptive similarities on a global level between the history of writing and the development of written language in the young child. Examination of the specific developmental patterns of data of these two phenomena reveals some common elements and some discrepancies between these two patterns. The history of orthography as well as…

The relationship between recurrent otitis media (middle ear infection characterized by the presence of middle ear fluid and possibly leading to a temporary conductive hearing loss) and learning disabilities (LD) is examined. Traditional treatment approaches (antibiotic medication and surgery) are reviewed. The definition of LD is presented and the…

A study was conducted to examine the interrelationships between drawing, early writing, and the context of talk in which both phenomena occur. Participant observation methodology was used in a self-contained public school kindergarten in order to gather daily data during a 3-month period. Specifically, children freely drew and wrote in an…