Presents study conducted in France to determine which errors typically made by French-speaking Americans (errors in pronunciation, vocabulary, or grammar) are most objectionable to the French ear. Concludes grammatical errors were rated least tolerable. (Author/BK)

Appraises the academic reception of McLuhan's ideas. Suggests how his insights can be applied within a systematic research tradition. (The author uses his own research on the bias of speech and writing as an example.) (PD)

Describes the use of 10 word picture books to enrich the language experience of young children and to motivate their reading. (HOD)

Tests the hypothesis that mothers would label objects with adult-basic level terms when talking to other adults, but would label the same objects with child-basic terms when speaking to their young children who were just starting to talk, even though these labels may be very much "incorrect" by adult standards. (Author/RH)

Describes the Queensland project, "Study Talk," concerned with the study of oral language, with special consideration given to the exploration and study of the uses and varieties of talk. (HOD)

Describing what children at the preoperational stage know about writing, spelling, and words, the authors make specific recommendations for ways language arts teachers can build instruction that is based on this knowledge. (SK)

Investigates the relationships between the occurrence of mazes (garbles, word tangles, or false starts), sentence complexity, and the use of connectives in 20 fifth-grade students. (HOD)

Examines the relationship between syntactic maturity of oral language and reading achievement of first-grade students and compares this aspect of language competency to several traditional factors of reading readiness. (FL)

Analyzes errors that characterize French utterances produced by native speakers of English to determine the degree to which various categories of errors interfere with oral communcation. Error analysis is based on the spontaneous reactions of French speakers to correct and incorrect versions of the same utterances. Pedagogical implications are…

Three measures--logical reasoning ability, lexical comprehension, and home teaching activities--provided the best overall model in accounting for differences in children's performances across the print awareness measures. (HOD)

Describes a program of activities for increasing children's skill with oral language, including creative storytelling, questioning, and role exchange. (HTH)

The pros and cons of the influence of television on society are debated. Television is considered a means by which cultural information is transmitted and a powerful mechanism of socialization. However, television can be seen as a threat to the traditional role of literacy in society. (JN)

Concludes that the training of elementary school teachers to increase the frequency of oral questioning behavior in ethnic group students diagnosed as weak in oral communication increases the oral expression of those students. (FL)

An overview of studies on the role of talk in student learning. (RL)

Discusses the classroom teacher as role model for children acquiring language. Cites the traditional teacher-oriented format as one reason children do not imitate teachers' speech. (HTH)