Presents a critical review of studies designed to teach language production skills to children with specific language impairment. The evidence reviewed suggests that a number of training approaches are effective, often resulting in gains that exceed the rate seen in normal development, provided the speaking situation resembles enough the training…

Scores on the Picture Arrangement subtest of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised of 41 eight-year-olds referred for academic learning difficulties were analyzed. Results suggested that visual sequencing skills and language development skills are necessary prerequisites for reading and spelling. (CL)

The relationship between child age and mean length of utterance measured in morphemes (MLU) was studied in a sample of 123 middle to upper middle class midwestern children, aged 17 to 59 months, conversing with mothers in free play. A significant correlation was found between age and MLU: r=.88. (Author)

Examines three broad functions that underlie all use of language--language for learning (language as a representation of the world), language for living, and language for linking (connected discourse in context). Considers teacher knowledge of these language functions essential if the teachers are to guide student language acquisition. (RL)

The amount and type of disfluences in the speech of language delayed preschoolers receiving language therapy (N=9) and not (N=9) and nine normal controls were examined. Comparisons indicated that Ss who received language therapy had significantly more word and part word repititions than the other two groups. (Author)

Critiques previous research concerning differences in voice onset time discrimination between Spanish and English infants and conclusions about the effect of early linguistic experience on speech perception. (RMH)

Argues that Aslin and Pisoni's criticisms are basically unwarranted on both methodological and conceptual grounds. (RMH)

The questions 17 mothers addressed to their children, aged 18-34 months, during a play session were examined for the purpose they served in the conversation and the forms used to express them. (RH)

Noam Chomsky proposed that when children learn a language they do not learn to imitate given sentences; rather, they learn rules by which an infinite number of sentences can be produced and understood. This essay discusses the impact which this has had on the way educators view language and learning. (KC)

The Test of Language Development was administered to a purposive sample of early elementary learning disabled students in an effort to analyze their language performance. Statistically significant differences were indexed between receptive and expressive language skills for this sample. (Author)

Through a review of a language development course, the author discusses the ways in which linguistic knowledge is presented to students, reports on his direct experience of working as a tutor, and examines what he thinks should be the characteristic relationship between linguistics and inservice pedagogy. (Author/KC)

Research related to psycholinguistics, language, and creativity is reviewed and found to be inadequate in defining reading. A definition of giftedness is suggested to cover a person who makes the most sense out of the world at any given moment in time within any given culture. (CL)

Discusses the influence television has on children's language development and lists television resources that illustrate children's literature, vocabulary and reading skills, mathematics, and study skills. (HTH)

The article outlines strategies for improving the assessment of language at the school level through staff involvement in designing and implementing a school based language assessment program. (Author)

Picture cards, photographs, and real objects were compared as training stimuli in order to determine which best facilitated the generalization of naming responses learned in a special training room to real objects in the natural environments of four severely retarded children (ages 5, 6, 9, and 14). (Author)