Research studies have demonstrated that children tend to define nouns by describing first their function and later the object to which they refer. In a study devised to trace the development of noun definition in the language of grade school children and adults, 20 subjects from each of four grade levels (kindergarten and grades two, four, and…

To determine the most effective language training activities for trainable mentally retarded (TMR) children, the variables of degree of previous language training, IQ, Peabody language treatment program versus Distar language treatment program, pretest versus posttest, and sex were examined with 122 TMR Ss (7 to 14 years old). Results of the…

This is the fourth and final report in a series dealing with the impact of the modes of discourse (description, narration, exposition, and argumentation) on written syntactic complexity at the elementary school level. The first three reports dealt in turn with the three grade levels involved in the study (third, fourth, and fifth grades). This…

This study of the self-directed, interpretive, and creative reading elements of the Wisconsin Design for Reading Skill Development was conducted to gather descriptive data about implementation strategies being developed and practiced by field test teachers and to gather evaluative information about the usability of various management and…

This study incorporated a correlational methodology into an experimental context to determine the functional components of rehearsal strategies in children's discrimination learning. The subjects for this study were 120 fifth- and sixth-grade children attending two elementary schools located in middle-class areas of Ogden, Utah. According to the…

This book outlines a plan for individualizing instruction in spelling. Part 1 describes how to organize and manage the program and provides examples of instructional materials. Part 2 concerns the ways that students learn to spell words as they work within this individualized spelling program. The appendixes which comprise over half the document,…

It is the contention here that the "prelinguistic" period is an important phase of the language acquisition process. Accordingly the research reported represents an attempt to begin mapping out the types of linguistically relevant information to which a young child attends. Specifically it is hypothesized that young children are…

Concomitant with a child's acquisition of phonological, syntactic, and semantic rules of an adult language is the need to learn pragmatic and contextual abilities for proper use of the language. As early language acquisition is closely allied with play, three children aged about 22 to 40 months were observed during play activities to determine…

Many researchers have assumed that adult bilinguals have separate systems for their two languages. Such an assumption raises interesting questions about how the two languages are acquired in the case of a child learning two languages simultaneously. This study attempts to determine whether the two languages are acquired separately right from the…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of deictic reference in the speech of 19 three-year-old Black children. The deictic verbs of motion are examined with reference to other aspects of the deictic system. The data for this study are approximately eight hours of spontaneous speech collected in a pre-school classroom. The hypothesis to…

Three hypotheses were tested: (1) there is no significant difference between the proportions of higher level definitions given by the monolingual students and those of the bilingual students given in English; (2) there is no significant difference between the proportions of higher level definitions given by the monolingual students and those of…

Evaluated was the comprehension of maternal and experimentally posed Wh questions (such as what, why and who) by two 5-year-old Down's Syndrome children. Weekly taperecordings of mother-child play situations and videotapes of individual sessions with the experimenter were analyzed in terms of form, content, and appropriateness of Ss' response.…

This longitudinal study explored the effects of early language stimulation upon norms of the language development of three infants. When the infants were 4-5 months old, a long-term program of intensified early language stimulation was implemented by weekly home tutoring sessions with the parents. The tutor stimulation program consisted of an…

This paper discusses the role of language in early childhood education. The concept of Chomsky's generative grammar is explained briefly and the linguistic approaches of Piaget, Vygotsky and Whorf are compared with regard to the relations between cognitive structures and inner linguistic structures. An enigmatic discussion of language acquisition…

To write well is not a singular ability; it utilizes critical thinking, creativity, and a feeling for language. An examination of a number of pieces of writing by elementary school pupils shows that some are highly imaginative while others are informative reports, simple statements of events, colorful descriptions, or various forms of poetry.…