The implications of family communication styles for teaching English as a second language (ESL) are explored. Family interaction types differ according to culture and social class. Factors in family interaction influence the way a second language is learned and the way it can best be taught. Two basic family types are distinguished: the personal…

In a primary school in Dade County, Florida, disadvantaged kindergarten children were entering first grade without the receptive language and listening skills necessary to succeed academically. A practicum attempted to remedy this problem by stimulating kindergarten children's receptive language skills in vocabulary and listening comprehension.…

A case study was undertaken to examine the influence of one aspect of signed grammar, transparency of reference of some signs, on the acquisition of possessive pronouns in American Sign Language (ASL). The subject was a hearing child of deaf parents who was learning ASL and English. Data were collected in home visits betwen the ages of 1.1 and 3.2…

A study was conducted to identify the contributions of both prior knowledge and prereading vocabulary instruction to passage comprehension. In addition, semantic mapping and semantic feature analysis--instructional strategies that build upon students' prior knowledge--were compared with a modified basal approach for effectiveness as prereading…

Language research over the past two decades has revealed that language is not something children "acquire," but rather a system they build. A key factor in this linguistic construction is children's interaction with parents or other caregivers. The studies reveal further that children's repeated interactions with books and stories and…

Parents and teachers often ask for help in finding a variety of appropriate language arts materials to use with blind preschoolers through age 4. (LH)

Examined are aspects of speech training that are crucial to attainment of understandable speech by the congenitally deaf, and the optimum time for auditory training. (Author/MC)

A study to evaluate a developmental/behavioral approach to the treatment of autistic children 5 to 11 years of age is described in detail, with particular reference to the advantaged of using parents as therapists and of basing treatment on the home rather than on the clinic. (Author

Continued interest in second language acquisition as a reflection of first language acquisition may be due to increasing evidence of universals in child language acquisition. Some research has indicated that second language acquisition patterns do not match first language acquisition patterns. Rather than arguing that second language acquisition…

Three ten-step series of synthetic speech stimuli were constructed: /raem/ to laem/, /raem/ to /waem/, and /laem/ to /yaem/. Within each series, differences consisted of variations in onset frequency and slope of transition in the second or third formant. These stimuli were presented to 5- to 7-year-old children in identification…

Three groups (41 university reading faculty members, 34 classroom teachers, and 128 parents) provided data about their attitudes toward the relationship between language and reading, the reading process, and reading instruction. The results suggest that the three groups have different concepts of teaching and learning. For example, in the…

This article discusses the assessment of language and cognitive development as reflected in preschool activities and describes the Preschool Language-Cognitive Assessment for Curriculum Entry (PLACE). Five task-skill areas associated with common preschool activities (building with blocks, completing puzzles, pounding pegs, etc) are identified. How…

Developmental trends in the effects of expectations regarding agent/action matches on judgments of sentence acceptability were investigated. Five sentences reflected expected relations ("harmonious") and five contradicted them ("contrary"). Twelve subjects each were in grades 4 through 8 during year 1; the same 60 subjects…

The purposes of this study were (1) to investigate changes in knowledge acquired by children between the ages of 8 and 17, with respect to certain complex word-derivation processes and (2) to investigate the relation of the changes in children's knowledge of word derivation to various aspects of their reading achievement. The study used ten words…