Explores the surface structure observed in Japanese and English spontaneous oral narratives from the perspective of subject and theme. Although both the Japanese and the English narratives employ participant identification as a major cohesive ingredient, how referring forms are used and how they contribute to discourse organization differ. (SED)

Shows how retelling stories appears to be a strategy to improve comprehension, concept of story and oral language. (EL)

Responds to an article appearing in an earlier issue of the journal that discussed the relationship between social-cognitive ability and writing skill. Reports on a study that investigated the relationship and found that social cognitive ability was more closely related to oral than to written performance. (FL)

Describes a study which sought to determine the developmental stage at which children begin to differentiate specific and neutral contingent queries. The study manipulated the familiarity of the adult listener by having each of the 22 children interact both with the mother and with an unfamiliar adult experimenter. (SED)

Describes the InQuest Procedure, which actively involves the reader or listener with narrative text through a combination of student questioning and spontaneous drama techniques. (FL)

It is suggested that native speakers understand that narrative in literature is a form of transcript of full discourse, and students of English can learn the same clues of transaction and interaction in texts through exercises in plot analysis, plot mutation, and scenario derivation. (MSE)

Focuses on (1) the disparities between reading and writing instructional methodologies, (2) the misconceptions students seem to draw if these disparities are not brought to their attention, and (3) the recursive relationship between written and oral language. Contrasts the relationships between main ideas and details in reading processes with…

Three levels of metacommunication knowledge and five factors that influence the understanding of speaker meaning in oral language were identified in pilot interviews with children and adolescents. (HOD)

Focuses on the narrative function to show how children can build on another speaker's turns in conversation and can build on their own utterances as they speak. Analyzes children's dialogs and narratives to highlight the primacy of the oral language arts as they are enacted in daily conversation and play. (HTH)

Describes two experiments that investigate the relationship between beginning readers' concept of word in text and their awareness of phonemes in spoken words. (HOD)

Considers register (factors that vary in situational contexts and produce differences in meaning intent and meaning exchange) variance with its accompanying language transactions during written language events involving children and adults. Illustrates register variance with the writing and drawing of a four-year-old and a first-grader. (HTH)

This book is a "three-in-one" text that students may use to: (1) Develop their critical understanding of research literature through a focus on reviewing relatively small-scale investigations in a particular field of inquiry; (2) Increase their appreciation of what it is possible to achieve through professionally conducted research investigations…

Twenty texts in the Chinese dialect of Shanghai city are presented as a tool for those familiar with some dialect of Chinese who are learning this variety. The texts, recorded as spontaneous speech, were originally collected for grammatical analysis and have been revised somewhat for print form. They are arranged in approximate order of…

The software "Breakthrough to Literacy" was introduced in kindergarten classrooms in a suburban school district in 1999 and focuses on oral language development. Through observations, the author studied the effects the software had on individual children's oral language and pre-reading readiness skills. Along with reading skill development, oral…

Research suggests that oral language development is directly related to literacy, and is crucial for success in learning to be literate. This topical bibliography and commentary discusses language acquisition theories, components of language, phonology in literacy, and a first-grade classroom study that explored "literate talk" in the classroom…