An investigation of incidental teaching practices on the spontaneous speech of 12 disadvantaged preschool children during free-play periods which demonstrated that such periods can be powerful learning times by capitalizing on moments when children seek new plan materials. (Author/EH)

Describes how Developmental Sentence Scoring, an instrument or procedure for estimating a child's native language development, can be used to measure second language acquisition. (PMP)

Advocates increased stress on music for preschool children for aid in language learning. (CH)

This article focuses on three aspects of language instruction in early childhood education: a) educational and sociological events which prompt concern over language behavior, b) results of research of the last 10 years, and c) suggestions for curriculum and instruction. (HMD)

Preschool children were tested for their understanding of the use of definite and indefinite articles in 2 kinds of story-telling tasks. (ST)

Language samples were gathered from two children, from several weeks after the first birthday of each child to the beginning of the child's two-word period (approximately 10 months). The children were observed and videotaped every two weeks, to obtain 33 continuous minutes of tape. Analyses focused on the question of whether or not the child uses…

An investigation of the nature of one, 2-year-old child's imitative competence in using the modal auxiliary system of English (using "will" and "can") during two periods two months apart. (ED)

Three meanings for the title of this article are discussed: the dawn of language in the species, for each individual (language acquisition), and as an academic discipline. It is argued that the third "dawn" will not take place until language is recognized as an independent discipline in its own right. (KM)

To assess children's capacities to effect appropriate "metaphoric links" and to discriminate among metaphors of varying appropriateness, a task probing verbal metaphoric skill was administered to subjects ranging in age from 4 to 19 years. (Author/RM)

The author reviews literature on fluency of decoding, sentence awareness or comprehension, and comprehension of larger than sentence texts, in relation to reading comprehension problems in learning disabled children. Initial sections look at the relation of decoding and fluency skills to skilled reading and differences between good and poor…

The study investigated differences in language development between two groups of learning disabled (LD) high school students, 40 LD students in secondary regular classes, and 40 LD students integrated into regular secondary classes and receiving additional support through learning resource centers. The Test of Adolescent Language (TOAL) was used…

A set of six conditions for critically analyzing proposals in the various areas of language acquisition is developed and justified. These conditions are then applied to theoretical proposals in language acquisition literature. Proposals in the following areas are discussed and evaluated: (1) phonological development, (2) early lexical development,…

The fact that technical writing is a form of discourse and not just a craft to be learned for a specific purpose means that it has at least three implications for the structure of writing programs. First, it is a method of writing development that is "you-centered" rather than "I-centered." Second, it is a heuristic for perceiving and organizing…