As an aid in devising individualized programs for handicapped students, the document presents a breakdown of developmental skills. Behavioral statements are arranged hierarchically for eleven skill areas (subskills in parentheses); gross motor (walking, eye/arm coordination, singing), fine motor control (grasp, block manipulation, and finger…

Available in English and French and intended for parents and professional workers such as nursery school teachers and day care workers, the handbook provides information on the way visual impairment affects the child's development and instructions for guidance in the early years. Sections cover the following topics: reactions to blindness by the…

The value of language learning theory and research is discussed, and the need for content-related linguistic, sociolinguistic and cultural research, as well as treatment-related research on language teaching and learning, is emphasized. It has been only gradually, from about the mid-sixties and increasingly from the early seventies, that second…

This paper describes the linguistic development of two hearing sons of deaf parents. Both were exposed to an early language environment different from that of the average hearing child. At the start of the study, the boys were aged 3 years, 9 months, and 1 year, 8 months, respectively. When first observed, the older child performed well below age…

This paper describes an external evaluation study of the Responsive Environment Early Education Program (formerly known as the Responsive Environment Program for Spanish American Children), an educational intervention program for "high risk" (low birth weight) 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children in Clovis, New Mexico. Major goals of the…

The articles in this publication deal with English language study and other aspects of the English curriculum. Topics include the role of English in the secondary curriculum, a whole school language policy, information on language and language acquisition published in the past ten years that should be incorporated into language study courses, an…

English teachers typically do not employ the techniques reported by research as best able to develop students' language abilities. Research studies have revealed that there is little value in engaging students in the formal study of grammar and have indicated that language learning should not be fragmented. Many techniques and instructional…

Physical Verbalization (PV) is a program designed to encourage language/speech development by combining movement with appropriate verbal patterns. Using the normal developmental stages of listening/watching, imitating, and initiating, the program allows the child to "play" with standard English in a nonthreatening and rhythmic fashion and to be…

A study investigated the linguistic development of three kindergarten children judged to be high, moderate, or low in emergent reading ability. Specifically, the study examined whether a developmental direction from dialogue to monologue exists in the children and whether a characteristic of thought termed "inner speech" underlies each…

This study was undertaken to support the approach of teaching natural language and to illustrate what linguistic research can say to foreign language textbook developers and classroom teachers. The reality of oral conversational Spanish, as illustrated by research in language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and historical linguistics, is one in…

A study was conducted to determine the feasibility of using oral story making experiences to improve the oral language proficiencies and "sense of story" of fourth grade remedial reading students through select literary experiences. These experiences included exposing the students to literature in read-aloud exercises, and using wordless…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 20 titles deal with the following topics: the role of crib talk in language acquisition; syntactic parsing strategies; a case study of the first use of words; how two modes of literature presentation affect oral language…

Four conference papers on discourse are included. In "How Context Contributes to the Interpretation of Temporal Expressions," Carlota S. Smith provides a summary analysis of the temporal interpretation of English sentences. Many sentences are shown to be semantically incomplete; it is argued that information from neighboring sentences is…

The way that mothers' input assists children with the use of their linguistic resources for negotiating peer interaction was studied. Two two-year-old girls and their mothers were videotaped once a month for eight months while the foursome met at a weekly playgroup. The mothers' language was analyzed in terms of the following questions: (1) Does…

This compilation contains the following research reports on child language: (1) "Nouns: Love 'Em or Leave 'Em" by Dianne Horgan; (2) "Logic in Early Child Language" by Roy D. Pea; and (3) "Theories of the Child's Acquisition of Syntax: A Look at Rare Events and at Necessary, Catalytic, and Irrelevant Components of…