Four possible alternative approaches for developing word recognition skills (including sample lesson plans for both primary and intermediate grades) were presented. The first emphasized the importance of the relative order of difficulty of word analysis skills involving phonic abilities and auditory and visual discrimination in both primary and…

The author aims: (1) to show that generative phonology uses essentially the method of internal reconstruction which has previously been employed only in diachronic studies in setting up synchronic underlying phonological representations; (2) to show why synchronic analysis should add the comparative method to its arsenal, together with whatever…

This paper deals with methods and models appropriate to the systematic linguistic study of the child's acquisiton of phonology. Sections I through IV present a review of previous studies in the field, discuss the usefulness of the concept of "innateness," discriminate between phonetic and phonological ability, and discuss the concept of discrete…

The comprehension of deviant sentences is dependent on several linguistic variables. Grammaticalness (G), meaningfulness (M), and familiarity (F) are three variables which are potentially such. In order to study the effect of violating these variables upon Ss' responses to deviant sentences, 85 deviant and 15 correct sentences were assigned to…

Ways that the teacher can make communication skills instruction relevant to the learner are emphasized. It is suggested that teachers (1) learn more about our language structure, (2) study the particular environment and language of students, (3) emphasize strategies of word attack in context rather than teach lists of individual sight words, (4)…

Differentiation of the effects of cultural deprivation and achievement characteristics as they relate to auditory comprehension and by implication to potential reading ability was investigated. A total of 80 eighth-grade students were classified into four experimental groups: deprived-achievers, deprived-nonachievers, nondeprived-achievers, and…

A child's language development during the elementary school years is described, with emphasis on acquisition and control of structural and lexical dimensions of the language of standard and nonstandard speakers and with special concern for the relationship between language production and the reading process. Numerous research studies are reviewed…

Four researchers discussed their studies of oral reading miscues within a round-table format. After each participant's description of the specific concerns and procedures of his study, the following topics were discussed: description and analysis of the miscue, correction strategy, relationship of the child's language to the language of the…

Bilingual education means that equal emphasis is given to the development of the child's first language and to the learning of English as a second language. The teacher should know exactly where his students are in the development of their first language when they begin to study the second language. This requires a knowledge of the language…

The purpose of the LARC (Language Acquisition Resource Center) project is to implement a home-based program which will help children of ages six months to five years develop communication skills. The program is designed for children of all socioeconomic groups, although it has been set up by the Center for Urban Education (CUE) as a pilot program…

This report describes an investigation of the acquisition by children of a symbolic system, specifically English nomenclature--that set of nouns that serves the function of naming, denoting, or referring to objects. The five studies involve nine experiments dealing with one or another of the aspects of this problem. Two questions guided these…

This is primarily a book for the classroom teacher, although it will also prove useful to parents, child-guidance workers, physicians, and others who are concerned with the development and training of children with speech handicaps. Contents include "Speech Improvement as an Educational Problem,""Recognizing Speech Disabilities,""The Development…

A description of the linguistic characteristics of casual conversations of Los Angeles Negro K-3 school children was recorded outside the classroom in small groups with two to five participants. Analysis of phonological, syntactic, and lexical characteristics discloses considerable variation in the children's speech, exhibiting both a significant…

In 1964, the author proposed a multisensory approach to reading, and reading was seen as a language skill related to the development of verbal symbolic behavior. A closer focus was permitted on the child's learning process, which consists of preverbal learning (perceptually automatized and subconsciously acquired) and conceptual learning (which is…

A model for helping classroom teachers understand and evaluate the growth of children in oral and written compositions is presented. The recommended procedure is centered around T-unit analysis. The following sequence is one possible way the T-unit analysis procedure might be used by an elementary school teacher: (1) Divide all the sentences of a…