Reports on an experiment in which 2 groups of 20 Japanese learners of English as a Second Language performed 2 monologic production tasks with and without time for planning. It was found that providing learners with time to plan their utterances results in interlanguage productions that are more complex. (64 references) (Author/VWL)

Explores the process of language acquisition, including such aspects as pre-language, speaking and signing, and cultural influences, focusing on the resulting language acquisition differences and needs of children whose language ability and medium do not correspond with those of their family. (CB)

Examines joint attentional processes in children's early lexical acquisition and conversational interaction. Early language development builds on adult-child joint attentional focus on nonlinguistic entities. A developmental sequence of joint attentional processes in early language development is proposed, and the role of adults in this sequence…

Adding German subtitles to German videos that are specifically aimed at aural comprehension development assists learners in acquiring new vocabulary and developing listening comprehension, and also facilitates the transition from reading to comprehending the spoken language. (Author/CB)

Suggests some considerations crucial to maintaining and improving the current acceptance and promotion of foreign language instruction, focusing particularly on notions involving functional language learning and oral language skills. (CB)

Seventeen children (ages 5-7) with specific language impairment (SLI) were compared to age-matched (AM) and language-matched (LM) groups on measures of metalinguistic skill. SLI children's performance was worse than AM peers and indistinguishable from younger LM children, suggesting that morphological awareness is more closely allied to oral…

Demonstrates that critical approaches to voice, as a central manifestation of subjectivity, are currently skewed toward spoken or written phenomenon. Argues for voicing as a phenomenon that is constructed and expressed visually and orally, and as a phenomenon that has import also in being a thing heard, perceived, and reconstructed. (TB)

Reviews published research on the question of whether recipients of utterances pay attention to gesture and whether they alter their understandings of utterances in light of this. Examines both experimental and observational studies. (51 references) (MDM)

Presents a quantitative study of children's noun plural overregularizations on recent comparisons of connectionist and symbolic models of language. The speech of 10 English-speaking children aged 1;3 to 5;2 were analyzed. Results pose challenges to connectionist models, but are consistent with the blocking-and-retrieval-failure model in which…

This article explores the effect of raters' background on assessments made in an occupation-specific oral language test, the Japanese Language Test for Tour Guides. Assessments of 51 test candidates made by 33 assessors were compared in order to determine what effect background has on assessments made on both linguistic and "real-world"…

Presents a critical review of the published accounts of the "Genie Case," involving psycholinguistic research conducted by Susan Curtiss and others in the 1970s with an adolescent with extremely limited language ability. The review maintains that serious discrepancies still remain in the accounts of the subject's language abilities. (21…

Argues that second language teaching that aims to foster speaking skills and natural spoken interaction should be based upon the grammar of spoken language, not on grammars that mainly reflect written norms. Using evidence from a mini-corpus of conversational English, it is shown that popular pedagogical grammars are deficient in conversational…

English-as-a-Second-Language learners are not always aware of the interference of native culture rhetorical patterns in writing Western academic exposition. Ways to integrate many of those patterns into the discourse norms of academic writing, even when the patterns are oral-based, are described. (55 references) (Author/LB)

Investigated the effects of three types of block, housekeeping, and changing thematic play centers on young children's language production. Although results indicated that language production and vocabulary varied according to the type of center, children produced more oral language and used more diverse vocabulary in the block center. (Author/BB)

Presenting an account of the general workings and functions of English intonation and accentuation, the discussion notes the prominent role of accent placement. An attempted overall framework for interpreting intonation and accent in English takes account of the discourse dimension to render the subject accessible to both teacher and learner.…