Dyad interactions of three kindergartners with deafness or hearing impairment were analyzed. Results suggest that subjects were less successful at initiations than nondisabled children, but the success of the initiations may depend on number of children involved, accompaniment of actions and/or gestures with spoken or signed communication, and…

This follow-up to a longitudinal speech and educational outcome study compared 24 adults (and their children) with history of moderate phonological-language disorder and 28 adults (and their children) with normal articulation as children. Children of the proband subjects performed significantly more poorly on all tests of articulation and…

In this longitudinal study, changes in parental labelling and infants' categorization skills were examined as potential predictors of vocabulary acquisition, the age of the naming explosion, and the acquisition of subordinate labels. Findings suggest that the influence of each factor varies as a function of the stage and aspect of lexical…

Investigated how three Spanish-speaking children, enrolled in a bilingual preschool, used Spanish and English with each other. Results indicated that exposure to English books and popular cultural materials enabled them to use English readily and easily but that their use of English during play superceded their use of Spanish, suggesting the…

Nineteen children with developmental delays in the first stage of language learning conversed with their parents in a laboratory setting. Adult utterances were coded for topic, question type, and nonquestions. Child utterances were coded for topic. Child topic continuations were more likely to follow adult continuing questions than any other type…

Theories of writing development put forth by C. Bereiter (1980), B. Kroll (1981), and K. Perera (1984) are reviewed and presented as frameworks for practitioners working with students having language learning disabilities (LLD). The theories are considered with regard to the assessment of written language, and written language intervention…

Reviews four books concerning children's thinking, language acquisition, the art of teaching, and literacy: (1) "Children's Thinking: Promoting Understanding in the Primary School" (M. Bonnet); (2) "Input and Interaction in Language Acquisition" (B. Richard); (3) "The Effective Teacher" (C. Cullingford); and (4)…

Evaluates the role of age on the rate of acquiring English as a second language in an immersion setting in children with native languages typologically very different from English. Results suggest that on certain aspects of grammar, different-aged children can acquire a second language during the first three years of acquisition at similar rates…

The literature on how children begin understanding subjectivity and point of view in fictional stories is considered. Examination of the oral stories of a five-year-old child indicated the ability to depict the beliefs, intentions, feelings, and perceptions of the story characters. Implications for assessment and interventions to help children…

Examined 1 hour of conversation between 12 mothers and their 23-month-old children. Children were more likely to imitate correct grammatical morphemes after mothers' corrective recasting of children's errors than after three types of maternal responses that did not correct an error but did model a morpheme. (BC)

The extent to which items from the Test of English as a Foreign Language and the First Certificate in English function differently for test-takers of equal ability from different native language and curricular backgrounds was investigated. Results suggest a need for methods like logistic regression to examine nonuniform differential item…

Describes Project Desert Shield, a curriculum that preschool children and teachers at a U.S. military base in Germany developed to embrace and constructively deal with the interests and concerns of the children about Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm through dramatic play. (Author/BB)

Evaluation of the interactive intervention model with mothers and young children (n=32) with developmental delays found that treatment mothers became more responsive and less directive and provided clearer linguistic models. Treatment children increased their use of vocal turns but did not make significantly greater improvement in overall…

Reports findings from the second year of a three-year study following four children from a prekindergarten Head Start program through first grade. Investigates the impact of kindergarten instruction on the development of literacy. Suggests that children may define writing and reading as their teachers' instructional practices dictate. (SR)

A research-in-progress report is presented on how students process second-language reading materials presented to them on the computer. The preliminary findings, based on log records generated by first- and second-semester Spanish students using "Recuerdos de Madrid" lessons, can help focus a research agenda for computer-assisted language learning…