To investigate children's ability to make linguistic judgments, a 60-item Awareness of Acceptable Sentences task was constructed. This task and the reading subtest of the Metropolitan Achievement Test were administered to 144 children in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. Analyses of results indicated that children's performance on the…

The essay in this issue of "Insights" develops the theses that children's language environment is the key to their language development, that the school setting and language arts program contribute little to language development, and that greater use of the best of children's books could significantly enhance children's language development. The…

The purpose of the study was to assist in developing a system of communication for six multiply handicapped hearing impaired children (2 1/2 to 5 years old). The Natural Gesture language system was employed to initiate communication between educator and child. The educational intervention consisted of daily 1/2-hour language lessons incorporating…

Samples of secondary school students in Tanzania were administered repertory tests with elements consisting of either persons or countries in both of the languages English and Swahili. Comparison of English and Swahili grids showed that language deficit reduces the polarization of judgements made using constructs articulated in the weaker…

Author visited twenty-four school districts set throughout Canada in order to learn how they each approached the problem of teaching non-English-speaking immigrant children. Five different types of programs for E. S. L. students were evaluated. (Author/RK)

Seven different age levels were used to test the correlation between age and unfilled pauses (UP) and between age and parenthetical remarks (PR) in narratives elicited by visual stimuli. (Author/AM)

Gives the results of a survey showing that the age factor, rather than the learning situation, is the predominant variant in learning the pronunciation of a second language. As Eric Lenneberg suggested, puberty may indeed be an important turning point in language learning ability. (TL)

Reports on a diachronic study concerning the syntactic phenomena of coordination and subordination and their place in language acquisition. The organization and evolution of the coordination system of 4 children, ages 3-6 was studied. The need for investigation of adult speech for further understanding acquisition is stressed. (Text is in French.)…

By helping to produce a monthly school newsletter, senior-age trainable retarded students' cognitive, language and social skills are enhanced. (CL)

Advocates a reworking of lexical pedagogy with reference to the instruction of techniques of expression. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Several propositions about the relationships between and among environmental variables of relevance to IQ were tested. Environmental variables hypothesized to be related to IQ were measured longitudinally across three time periods in childhood (0-3, 4-6, 7-10 years) on a sample of 110 subjects. (Author/CS)

An analysis is provided of the effects of poverty on child development and later intellectual competence, in terms of goal seeking and problem solving, use of language, and patterns of social reciprocity. Implications are charted for public policy and for the conduct of early childhood education. (EH)