The English language portions of appropriate levels of the Language Assessment Scales (LAS) were administered to 193 English-speaking monolingual elementary school students. The students were aged 5-14, and had average reading achievement scores on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. On the basis of the publisher's norms, maturational trends in scores…

This summary of the literature on the relationships between oral and written language points out that (1) there is a similarity between first language acquisition and second language learning, and (2) children acquiring English as their first language and English-speaking adults learning a foreign language exhibit similar syntactic maturity. Also…

The effectiveness of a prescriptive teaching program on the reading, arithmetic, and linguistic development of 35 institutionalized mentally retarded children (mean age 12 years) was investigated. A prescriptive, precision teaching approach was used, along with positive reinforcement in the curriculum areas of reading, mathematical computations,…

From about age four to age eleven, a child's concept of "word" develops from a lack of conceptual differentiation about things and events to an awareness of words as meaningful elements in themselves. Piaget's theory of cognitive development offers a perspective from which this phenomenon can be evaluated. The preoperational and concrete…

The author reviews research on the use of standardized tests to identify bilingual handicapped children. Issues supporting and criticizing standardized measurement are considered, and the author concludes that no test approaching a reasonable level of fairness across cultural groups exists. Research on the psycholinguistic aspects of…

In arguing that language as speech is to be contrasted with language as writing, this paper examines some facts about the evolution of writing systems, draws upon some experimental studies, discusses the difference between speech and writing as being one of status within human cognitive structure, and notes that the difference may help explain why…

This condensation of an original report of the same title describes an analysis and comparison of writing performances of students in two studies: grade 8 students in the 1977 Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) Intermediate Evaluation Project and grade 12 and 13 students in the Interface Study, 1976. The chapters give the purposes…

Language development is the topic of three papers from the Macomb (Illinois) 0-3 Regional Project, a home based program for rural handicapped and high risk infants and toddlers. Cooperative efforts between the project and university speech and hearing services are described in the first paper. The second paper, addressed to parents, covers ways to…

This guide for parents discusses social competence in 2-year-old children, drawing upon anecdotal data to provide a sampling of 2-year-old children's social behavior and their parents' child rearing techniques. The data were collected from questionnaires, telephone interviews, and home visits in a 12-month study of the interactions of 86…

Children aged three to five were the subjects of two studies of the development of ability to classify diverse objects into superordinate categories. In the first experiment, subjects were asked to designate two of three pictorially represented objects as representative of a given category. The second experiment required subjects to choose from a…

A GROUP OF 14-YEAR-OLD GIRLS FROM WORKING CLASS HOMES WHO WERE RECOMMENDED BY THEIR SCHOOL COUNSELORS PARTICIPATED IN A STORY READING PROGRAM DESIGNED TO IMPROVE THE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OF DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN 1 1/2 TO 2 1/2 YEARS OLD. FOR 20 MINUTES A DAY, 5 DAYS A WEEK, FOR 8 MONTHS EACH GIRL MET WITH EACH OF HER FOUR PARTICULAR CHILDREN AND…

This document proposes a kindergarten curriculum designed to contribute to a substantial reduction of the cultural and conceptual gaps in the development of disadvantaged children. The study of an urban kindergarten class of 25 focuses on a curriculum emphasizing social studies, mathematics, and language and on teaching methodology with emphasis…

TWO VIEWS OF A DICTIONARY'S PURPOSE CAME INTO SHARP CONFLICT UPON THE PUBLICATION OF WEBSTER'S "THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY." THE FIRST VIEW IS THAT A DICTIONARY IS A REFERENCE BOOK ON LANGUAGE ETIQUETTE, AN AUTHORITY FOR MAINTAINING THE PURITY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. THE SECOND IS THAT A DICTIONARY IS A SCIENTIFIC…

"THE SOUND PATTERN OF ENGLISH" PRESENTS A THEORY OF SOUND STRUCTURE AND A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE SOUND STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF GENERATIVE GRAMMAR. IN THE PREFACE TO THIS BOOK THE AUTHORS STATE THAT THEIR "WORK IN THIS AREA HAS REACHED A POINT WHERE THE GENERAL OUTLINES AND MAJOR THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES ARE FAIRLY CLEAR" AND…

FOUR STUDIES CONDUCTED BY THE MOUNT VERNON PUBLIC SCHOOLS OVER A PERIOD OF FIVE SEMESTERS INVOLVED MACHINE-TEACHING READING TO 240 DISADVANTAGED PREKINDERGARTEN CHILDREN FROM THE CHILDREN'S CENTER AND THE CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER TO PREPARE THEM FOR MORE SUCCESSFUL KINDERGARTEN LEARNING THROUGH ACADEMICALLY-ORIENTED READINESS ACTIVITIES IN AN…