Discusses the advantages of and procedures for the dicto-comp exercises in the English as a Foreign Language classroom. The exercise consists of a passage which is read several times to students, who follow an outline of the reading. After the final reading, students are asked to reproduce the passage in writing. (Author/PJM)

In response to earlier studies by Thompson and Chapman (1977) and Clark and Clark (1977), 16 middle-class and upper-class White children between 1.2 and 2.2 were tested for overextension in production and comprehension. (AM)

Deals with an examination of available evidence concerning the speech of language impaired children, and an inspection of the evidence regarding other, nonlinguistic behaviors of these children that require related abilities in mental representation. (Author/MP)

Five studies examined preschoolers' understanding of linguistic form class and pragmatic context in presence of a single exemplar or multiexemplars. Data indicated that by 2 years, children use linguistic form class, and by age 3, use pragmatic context. Young children have begun to understand the distinction between generic and nongeneric noun…

Discusses recent research about contesting the deficit models of language and class. Criticizes the work of Barbara Tizard and Martin Hughes, claiming that, in fact, they create a new version of the deficiency model and fail to analyze the differentials in access to schooling. Notes that such a model ignores social circumstances. (KO)

Attempts to clarify the notion of language competence and draws on its relevance to language teaching practices. Language use competence may involve the adjustment of pre-assembled and memorized patterns and not so much the generation of expressions by direct reference to rules. (Author/CB)

Studied the development of speech act comprehension in 36 retarded and 36 nonretarded children at the developmental ages of five, seven, and nine years. Retarded and nonretarded individuals followed the answer obviousness rule and used the contextual and linguistic clues available to respond to yes-no interrogative sentences. (RJC)

Examines similarities between human evolution of language and the development of child's language, including the gradual building of sentence, the use of gestures, and the introduction of symbols. Discusses principles of human uniqueness, brain development, and the internal mechanisms for language stages, and offers conclusions similar to…

Within child language acquisition research, there has been a fair amount of controversy regarding children's knowledge of the grammatical properties associated with verbal inflection (e.g., tense, agreement, and aspect). Some researchers have proposed that the child's early grammar is fundamentally different from the adult grammar, whereas others…

An expressive disturbance of speech prosody has long been associated with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD), but little is known about the impact of dysprosody on vocal-prosodic communication from the perspective of "listeners." Recordings of healthy adults ("n" = 12) and adults with mild to moderate PD ("n" = 21) were elicited in four speech…

This study investigated the influence of cognitive and linguistic skills on the reading comprehension performance of a group of learners from diverse linguistic backgrounds. The study also compared the reading comprehension performance of grade 4 children who entered kindergarten with little or no experience with English (ESL) to that of a group…

This article reports on strategies used by immersion teachers to modify their speech in order to maintain the use of the target language while sustaining interactive communication and the concomitant teaching of the content and the second language. This classroom-based research, undertaken at Methodist Ladies College (MLC) in Melbourne, sources…

From an ethnographic and interaction analytical approach this paper examines how polylingual languaging is used by a group of young male Taekwondo fighters to construct an integrated streetwise and "schoolwise" persona as well as negotiate regional identities. The data discussed were collected in a Taekwondo club in a multicultural area…

Discusses some of the major stances taken in the debate on linguistic deprivation. Among those discussed are the socialization of linguistic codes, deficit and social-political-economic power theories, school bias explanation, and the difference hypothesis. [Available from Publications Branch, Education Department of Victoria, 234 Queensberry…

An examination of current educational theory regarding the functions of language, exploring the relationship of language and thought, various views of linguistic poverty, and language use and instruction in the school. (EH)