This paper reports the attempt to see which characteristics of the speech of Black and Mexican American children would be reliably evaluated by experts specializing in dialect study. Presumably, if selected characteristics were evaluated with consistency and bases for these evaluations were given, such results could serve in training teachers to…

The acquisition of Literacy Project's basic goal is to determine the processes by which children learn to read, and to identify reasons many fail to learn. One part of the process is the formation of correspondences between letter patterns and the sounds for which they stand. To determine the extent of such correspondences, tests of pronunciation…

Metalinguistic knowledge, or linguistic awareness, involves the ability to focus attention upon the form of language in and of itself, rather than merely as the vehicle by which meaning is conveyed. This ability to analyze language structures lags behind spontaneous speaking and listening performance because of the additional cognitive skills…

Explores what it means to think in a target language, discusses those factors determining planned and unplanned use of more than one language for thinking, considers the role of target-language thinking in improving language ability, and examines mental translation in the reading of intermediate college French. The article concludes that benefits…

A study was conducted to determine: (1) whether language-impaired children have deficient paraphrase capabilities; (2) whether these deficiencies are both qualitative and quantitative; and (3) whether these abnormal skills are deterimental to normal linguistic growth. Forty-eight children from grades 1,3,5, and 7, with language impairments for…

Similarities and differences in language acquisition and variations in patterns of language dominance were studied with three four-year-old girls. The ideoqraphic study of child speech involved a monolingual English-speaking child, a monolingual Spanish-speaking child, and a bilingual English-Spanish-speaking child. The following measures were…

Research reports on the nature of speech, instrumentation for the investigation of speech, and practical applications of research are included in this status report for the January 1 - March 31, 1979 period. The reports deal with the following topics: an articulatory synthesizer for perceptual research; the perception of an oral-nasal continuum…

This book is designed to assist those who work with non-English dominant students by providing resource information relevant to second language teaching and learning. The articles in the series encompass both theory and practical learning techniques in six general topics. The third text of the series includes five articles on reading and writing.…

This book is designed to assist those who work with non-English dominant students by providing resource information relevant to second language teaching and learning. The articles in the series encompass both theory and practical learning techniques in six general topics. The articles in the second text of the series, concerning speaking and…

The acquisition of the consonant system by a child acquiring Mexican-Spanish as her native language is described. During the earliest stages (from 1;7 to 2;1 years of age), the data showed several phenomena that could best be accounted for by assuming a central role for the word as the basic unit being acquired. The evidence for the centrality of…

The present study offers a model of second language learning and examines aspects of the model in two experiments with high school students learning French. The model describes learning in terms of three parameters - learning processes, learning strategies, and learner characteristics. These three parameters together may be used to explain both…

This paper reports on the development of an error-coding instrument and a computerized continuous feedback system for the diagnostic evaluation and remedial treatment of unstructured second-language performances and the use of such a system in an instructional setting. The system does the following: it allows quick, objective, accurate, and…

Most of what has been taught in the language classroom for a long while has been generally a reflection of the particular concept of language popular among linguistics at the time, but recently this trend has begun to break down. Recent texts are starting to be organized according to considerations besides linguistic criteria, for example,…

In language instruction, a dependable informational base of fact, experience, or judgment is essential if students are to develop a functional literacy. Yet the language information base in use today--the set of concepts about what language is, how it works, and how individual languages are maintained--has proven inadequate and unreliable. Reform,…

On the basis of experimental data, the author makes the following observations: (1) the basic encoding processes in speech, the schemas of order, first produce elementary underlying sentences; (2) underlying sentence structure is the controlling step in the organization of speech; (3) underlying sentence structure plays a central role in…