Questions the validity of some child language studies that measure cognitive ability by the degree of complexity of the linguistic expression. Claims that these studies ignore many facets of the children's sociocultural experience as well as the influence of situational factors on their choice of linguistic codes, perpetuating socially biased…

Factor analysis of correlations among the measures of recall clustering, free sorting, and recognition errors revealed significant convergent validity for consistent use of a semantic perceptual organization strategy in the three tasks. Ten-year-old, adult, and elderly adult subjects relied on a semantic strategy; four- and six-year-olds encoded…

Outlines some of the problems children encounter while developing communicative competency. Discusses ways to assess an individual child's communicative abilities and the ways that language development research can help teachers enhance those abilities. (HTH)

Discusses the measurable benefits in reading improvement, language skills, listening skills, and access to material beyond present skills that children receive from teachers reading aloud. Includes guidelines for successfully reading aloud in the classroom and a brief bibliography of sources of good books to read aloud. (HTH)

Presents three interrelated theses on the mechanisms underlying developmental and transfer errors, and exemplifies these with reference to a number of English L2 developmental structures. Proposes a framework where linguistic factors play a major role in protracting the restructuring of the preverbal negation rule by Spanish learners. (Author/MES)

Reports on a study investigating the nature of metaphoric language in children's usage, specifically examining the unconventional word uses of one child between the ages of two years, three months, and four years, ten months. (Author/AM)

Tests used were the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test (receptive), the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language, and the Bellugi-Klima Comprehension Test. Significant differences in Ss' performances across tests were found for 11 of the 22 grammatical features under consideration. (Author/DLS)

Models of conceptual and language development by Orwell, Piaget, Whorf and Sapir, Vygotsky, and Bruner are reviewed. Their implications for teaching and some individual problem-solving experiments are discussed. (CP)

Concludes that there is a general language comprehension deficit in poor readers. (DD)

In response to earlier studies by Thompson and Chapman (1977) and Clark and Clark (1977), 16 middle-class and upper-class White children between 1.2 and 2.2 were tested for overextension in production and comprehension. (AM)

The longitudinal study investigated the acquisition of question formation in spoken English and American Sign Language by two young hearing children of deaf parents. The linguistic environment of the children included varying amounts of exposure and interaction with normal speech and with the nonstandard speech of their deaf parents. (Author)

Applies the principles of linguistics to the teaching of vocabulary in the French elementary schools, and to the training of teachers of French on the elementary level. (AM)

Notes that the grading and development of reading texts could be improved through the pinpointing of some linguistic landmarks in language development, discusses the selection and testing of language landmarks, and describes a study that tested children's knowledge of structures involving the word "although." (GT)

A restatement of the theory of reading developed by the author over the years, a defense of a whole-language comprehension-centered approach to teaching, and an attack on the back-to-basics movement. (DD)