Native Americans have various sorts of serious problems in the realm of education. The author considers and discusses the specific problems native Americans have during preschool, elementary, high school and higher education. She makes a number of suggestions for change in the educational system to help Native American students. (Author/SE)

It is argued that three misconceptions about language learning have limited the utility of performance objectives in individualized second language instruction. These misconceptions--confusion between competence and performance, inadequate identification of linguistic elements, and assumption that linguistic elements correspond to learning…

After a discussion of some important impulses that language teaching has received recently, a way is described by which the capacity for meeting communication and information needs through the foreign language can be developed. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

A study investigated the functional relationship that exists when mental ability and language competence are separately and simultaneously measured with regard to their influence on the effective treatment of verbal information. Data were gathered from 100 men and women, aged 20-60, who were tested for language competence, reading comprehension,…

The relationship between writing skills development and cognitive development is the focus of numerous research studies and deserves significant consideration in curriculum planning. Writing development studies indicate that as children work through the various modes of discourse (argumentation, exposition, narration, and description), they…

This discussion is based on the results of an earlier experiment in which four groups of deaf subjects, ranging in age of first exposure to signing from birth to over eighteen, were given lists of sentences in American Sign Language to shadow and recall immediately after presentation. It was found that in terms of overall accuracy, early learners…

The interview techniques developed by Carol Chomsky were used in a comparative study of the language acquisition of 32 bilingual and monolingual third grade students. After these students were matched for age, socioeconomic status, IQ, family environment (both parents in the home), and reading ability, they were placed in four…

Two aspects of the problem of native language grammar instruction, in this case English, are addressed. First, it is argued that a combination of linguistic and pedagogical factors contribute to the explanation for the apparent decline in English grammar instruction in the schools. Secondly, it is argued that effective grammar teaching should…

Psychological literature on field independence shows that the field independent individual possesses enhanced cognitive restructuring abilities, while the field dependent individual possesses interpersonal and social skills. It was hypothesized that field independence would be related to the acquisition of linguistic competence, and that field…

This book concludes a six-volume review of research and theory on learning and cognition. Its six chapters cover the following topics: theories of semantic memory, comprehension and memory of text, coding processes in memory, perceptual learning from reading, speech perception, and the organization and core concepts of learning theory and…

Sixteen children (aged 14 to 26 months), who were reported by their parents to overextend, were tested for overextension in both language production and comprehension. The children were first asked to name each of a series of pictures of inappropriate exemplars of the words they were reported to overextend. Those words that were overextended, a…

Two main viewpoints have been consistently implied in linguistic research on creativity. The externalist sees creativity as outside the normal language, and the internalist views creativity as a basic process of language use. In this paper, creativity is regarded as the adaptation of the potential of systems to the demands of a particular act of…

Small groups provide an ideal environment for developing linguistic security (seeing one's language as acceptable to those with whom one is most concerned about communicating). In a case study of seven students representing a cross section of two composition classes, small groups did foster linguistic security and written fluency. From remarks…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of varying the semantic content of active and passive sentences along a dimension of "personalness" on the comprehension of those sentences by preschool age children. The study focuses on a current linguistic controversy dealing with the relative adequacy of syntax-based and…

The two primary purposes of this book are to extend information about children's language learning and to look at existing notions of how children acquire language by considering what is meant by linguistic competence. The introductory chapter presents an account of two approaches to the study of language acquisition and outlines the author's…