Some of the issues, history, and approaches in the testing of second language writing skills are reviewed. It is argued that because writing serves many important functions in the lives of individuals and activities that speech cannot do equally well, it is time to stop viewing writing as secondary to speech and to accord it equal attention. Most…

Presented in this manual are 50 practitioner-contributed speech therapy activities for students from preschool through secondary levels, structured according to the following format: grade level, objectives, materials needed, and procedures. Half of the activities give students practice in articulation, while the other half are language activities…

This sourcebook contains a series of lesson plans for remediating pragmatic problems for students in preschool through grade six. Introductory material describes the concept and development of pragmatics (the ability to use language as a tool), provides an observation checklist for clinicians to use in identifying specific types of pragmatic…

A study examined primary-grade children's ability to construct felicitous, or audience-accommodating, character introductions in their stories. The study was intended to (1) describe the linguistic variation children employed in character introductions; (2) identify cognitive factors other than egocentrism contributing to infelicitous…

The paper explores issues in educating young children from minority language backgrounds who exhibit a special need. An overview of language development and use reviews the need for four types of skills and knowledge: grammatical or linguistic command of a language, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence.…

Addressing the question of how computers can assist language development, this discussion paper presents a broad overview of the potential for computer use across the elementary school language arts curriculum. It begins by listing several questions that must be considered when assessing the usefulness of computers within the language curriculum,…

Two experiments examining adults' use of dimensional adjectives focused specifically on the distinction made between height and overall size as determiners of "bigness." The subjects in both experiments were college students. In the first, the hypothesis that the meaning of "big" shifts as a function of the object being…

Five papers address factors in the education of children with cultural or linguistic differences. N. Dew documents the prevalence of exceptional bilingual children, analyzes trends, and recommends future data collection and monitoring efforts in "The Exceptional Bilingual Child: Demography." E. Vasquez Nutall et al present "A Critical Look at…

Scholars from varied disciplines--first language (L1) acquisition, second language (L2) acquisition, composition research, and cognitive psychology--have found a high level of permeability in their search for more effective classroom models of writing instruction. Among the most influential work in this area has been Stephen Krashen's theory of L2…

The booklet presents large group activities designed for severely developmentally disabled individuals. Activities are intended to meet a wide variety of ages and developmental levels and to foster opportunities for student response and participation. The first section explains a large group format entitled circle time. Themes explored in circle…

The report describes the development and field testing of the Early Social-Communication Scales (ESCS), a measure intended to reflect developmental dimensions of the at-risk infant's and toddler's adaptive interactions. The ESCS was designed to assess three major communicative functions (social interaction, joint attention, and behavior…

Evaluation activities conducted by the Hawaii State Department of Education in the Honolulu School District are described. These activities met all the requirements of the Title I Evaluation and Reporting System (TIERS). The Comprehensive Language Improvement Program (CLIP) was implemented to assist disadvantaged children. CLIP had four components…

Two claims are made concerning the interrelationship of language acquisition and socialization processes: (1) the process of acquiring language is deeply affected by the process of becoming a competent member of a society; and (2) the process of becoming a competent member of society is realized to a large extent through language and through…

This study focused on how French children aged 4, 6, and 8 years evaluate the conditions of use for modal expressions marking certainty and uncertainty in discourse. Children were shown films involving verbal interactions during which one of the protagonists produced a target utterance accusing another character of having performed a deed. Each…

This paper discusses four kinds of reasons for studying child language. The first of the four, biological reasons, includes the desire to understand our own species and its place among other living things in the universe. The common human faculty for communication, the variability in language building, and the similarity of human communication to…