This experiment compared the effects of training young black children in vocabulary versus sentence construction to see which type of training would result in greater transfer to other areas of language performance. A total of 144 black children in preschool and kindergarten were randomly assigned to vocabulary training, sentence training, or…

New print and nonprint resources for secondary level classroom use are available in the field of speech communication, which has become process oriented with continual interaction between speaker and listener. Of five specific books, three provide valuable resource material for teachers, focusing on practical teaching suggestions and the necessity…

This study attempted to determine whether the findings of psycholinguists to syntax and reading comprehension could be generalized to children of other English-speaking cultures. Specifically, the influence of material written at different levels of syntactic maturity (according to the T-unit analysis) upon the reading comprehension of selected…

In this book Piaget considers the way children learn about the world. He addresses such questions as the following: How does a child learn to perceive the world around him? How, for example, does he learn that by grasping an object, he can pull it towards him, or that a ball of clay, flattened, is no smaller than it was before? How does he learn…

Following a review of the attempts of researchers like Walter Loban, Kellogg Hunt, Roy O'Donnell, Raymond Norris, and William Griffin to measure the syntactic complexity of the language of school-age children, several inferences are made in this study about the assumptions these investigators have made about the nature of language and of the…

One of a series prepared by the Hawaii Newspaper Agency, this teaching guide offers suggestions on how to teach students to read the newspaper. The booklet presents a rationale for teaching students to read the newspaper, stresses the importance of creating the right classroom environment for teaching students to read the newspaper, defines what…

This study was concerned with the identification of assumptions underlying language arts instruction in open education, the identification of individuals knowledgeable about language arts instruction in open education, a discussion of implications of the identified language arts assumptions for curriculum development in open education, and the…

Designed to help secondary school students understand and become able to use the "language" of the scientist, which the author defines as including both vocabulary and thought processes and laboratory procedures, this book attempts to show that the reporting of scientific investigations has both a manageable pattern and a structure.…

Through the meaningful interpretation of sensory data and a background in language experiences, an individual can build more effective knowledge structures. With more effective knowledge structures, one can react more discriminatingly to the written and printed word. Sound knowledge structures involve not only the ability to organize and…

Three studies of preschool children's interpersonal speech usage were formulated in an attempt to understand this aspect of language development. First, a methodological study was designed to develop an instrument for assessing spontaneous interpersonal speech; second, a developmental study was aimed at identifying developmental changes in the…

This paper identifies and discusses the factors to be considered in selecting the words for beginning reading instruction. Vocabularies for beginning reading are based on the child's oral language, the child's interests, sound-letter regularity, and common words as found in written literature. In addition, there must be a balance among the various…

The purpose of this monograph is to collect in one convenient location all of the available research that directly or indirectly touches upon the question of the interrelationships among the language arts, i.e., oral language, written language, reading, and listening. Chapters include "Interrelationships between Written Expression and the Other…

Language planning involves decisions of two basic types: those pertaining to language choice and those pertaining to language development. Linguistic theory is needed to evaluate the structural suitability of candidate languages, since both official and national languages must have a high level of standardization as a cultural necessity. On the…

Designed to measure the syntactic maturity of oral speech, the K-Ratio Index was devised for use in an investigation of the relationships between certain measures of syntactic maturity of oral languages and silent reading comprehension scores. Preparation for computing the ratio was accomplished by transcribing oral speech samples, excluding…

Designed to measure a person's knowledge of commonly used prefixes and root words, this test is composed of the twelve most frequently occurring prefixes and the twelve most frequently occurring root words derived from Latin. During the untimed test, students are directed to select the best meanings for prefixes and other word parts. Content…