This is one in a series of eight discussion pamphlets produced by the Writing Across the Curriculum Project dealing with some of the issues connected with writing in the schools and their relation to learning. This pamphlet is concerned with what is involved in the learning of new ideas and what part language plays in the process. It includes…

This pamphlet is the third in a series of ten stemming from the view that language is central to learning, that teachers can gain insights into their work and into learning by examining the language of the classroom, and that current language theory can be the means to such insights. Specifically, the pamphlet presents ideas drawn from a five-year…

Language learning and language teaching are discussed in terms of H.E. Palmer's theory that language can be divided into primary matter (units learned by heart integrally) and secondary matter (units built up or derived by the pupil from primary matter). Excerpts from the "Nuffield German Teaching Materials" are used to illustrate how…

This paper reports on a study of bilingual education (schooling using both English and Spanish as media of instruction) by staff from the University of Texas and 30 bilingual elementary-school teachers from 13 Texas school systems. There was wide agreement on basic principles of bilingual education: that every child should be educated to his full…

Research has indicated that one significant deficiency in the intellectual capabilities of disadvantaged children is a disability in abstract thinking. Although all very young children lack this ability, the environment of the middle class child provides an opportunity so that as this child matures, the ability to think in abstract terms naturally…

An evaluation is provided of a project designed to create a bilingual environment and a program of bilingual instruction for first and second grade Spanish speaking children. A comparison is included of the language development and reading ability of the students taught in Spanish and English with those taught in English only. A pre- and…

Although normative figures of the performance of late kindergarten and entering first grade students on standardized readiness measures are usually available in the test manuals, no such data is available for pupils about to enter kindergarten. In order to obtain such data, 638 kindergarten (P-K) children in Minnesota were tested on three…

Concepts advanced by grammarians, linguistic historians, dialectologists, psycholinguists, lexicographers, semanticists, and phonologists, together with new approaches to reading, spelling, and literature, can help the teacher make the English program more stimulating for children. For instance, discoveries made by psycholinguists have attested to…

The Oakland County, Michigan, first-grade study of the effectiveness of three approaches to beginning reading was extended to the second and third grades to investigate differences in their effects on reading and related language development. Each of 11 research teams chose three classrooms which used either the Initial Teaching Alphabet approach…

This book of instructional materials for adult basic education teachers is a collection of exercises and activities which involve the use of resources found in the everyday environment of adults, relate to adult coping skills, and provide students with practice in language and computation. Following a brief introduction and discussion of adult…

Children use simile and metaphor at an early age in both spontaneous oral language and written language. This study sought (1) to design an instrument to elicit children's spontaneous oral production of simile and metaphor, (2) to elicit such responses and examine the nature of the responses to different tasks and stimuli, (3) and to develop…

The purpose of this project was to initiate a classroom journal-writing program that would provide children with an opportunity to express themselves freely, and that would offer useful information for improving relationships within the classroom. Both students and teacher kept daily journals for a year. Four simple rules governed the procedure,…

Although sex differences in reading and related language functions have frequently been reported for both average and retarded readers, the explanations thus far proposed (maturation rate, sex-role development, textbook content, "female bias," and psycho-social factors) do not satisfactorily account for these differences. One hypothesis that might…

The effect of children on adult language has only recently received serious consideration in the fields of linguistics, psychology, education, pediatrics and anthropology, although the importance of parental behavior for the language development of the child is universally recognized. This paper presents a review of the literature on children's…

By age two, a child begins to form complex sentences by joining two or more sentences or by embedding one sentence into another. Formation of conjoined structures is a simpler process and emerges earlier than that of embedding structures. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: (1) Do children produce or understand embedding…