Teachers can deal with language disordered children through discourse analysis, a conversational teaching process aimed at getting children to talk. Steps include selecting a topic to talk about during the remedial language session, having teacher and child take turns talking about the topic, using requests to constrain the child's responses so…

The author describes ACT (Acting Out Central Theme), a method for dealing with psychomotor, cognitive, and affective domains in slow readers. The ACT approach involves three sessions which focus on discussion of a theme such as friendship, presentaton of the theme as a skit, and assignment of topics to individual students. (SW)

Three experiments examined the perception of a three-way voicing contrast by monolingual speakers of English. The results demonstrate that the perceptual mechanisms used by adults in categorizing stop consonants can be modified easily with simple laboratory techniques in a short period of time. (Author/PN)

A noncategorical preschool program for handicapped children employs two language-intervention methods: a precision method in which groupings are made by ability level and data-taking procedures are emphasized; and an experiential method which involves pretesting and posttesting but provides groupings across all ability levels. (CL)

Reports a longitudinal investigation of family interaction variables and language development measured during preschool and again during the primary grades. In Black families of low income, preschool siblings (24 - 42 months of age) of second graders in two contrasting levels of reading achievement were observed in their homes. (Author/RH)

Examines five biliterate (reading/writing mastery in two languages) educational settings for their functional approaches to language instruction and their different teaching methods. Notes the implications of such examinations and comparisons regarding regular English instruction and teaching English to speakers of other languages. (RL)

Illustrates how children constantly solve communication puzzles in the course of language acquisition and offers suggestions for teachers and parents to assist children in their understanding of language. (HTH)

In a small experiment, normal and educationally subnormal primary children had no difficulty making negative referential descriptions in natural contexts, when their attention was drawn to the context by the experimenter. Awareness of context related to mental maturity, and there was a developmental trend in descriptive forms. (Author/SJL)

Studies the simultaneous language development in American Sign Language and spoken English by a hearing girl. Findings show: (1) a mixture of oral and manual babbling, (2) a code-switching ability across modalities, and (3) a single syntactic system incorporating rules from both languages but with two separate lexicons. (Author/PJM)

Describes a language program designed to allow a 4-year old autistic child to acquire skill across a variety of sentence types. Training focused on teaching combinatorial and semantic properties of grammatical morphemes, thus enabling the child to use sentences, instead of single words and rote phrases. (Author/PJM)

Discusses the growing recognition of international and social priorities concerning bilingual competency, the relevance of these priorities for child development, and research findings comparing the verbal and nonverbal skills of monolingual and bilingual children. The implications of the research for preschool and elementary curricula in the…

The results were interpreted as support for the view that oral and written language are interactive in their development, and that young children come to school with some reading abilities. For related information see EC 132 758-768. (Author)

Replies to McLaughlin's (l978) critique of the Krashen (1975, 1977) Monitor Model of language learning, presenting rebuttals to major attacks, followed by a discussion of minor issues. (AM)

Research Studies reveal that the development of native language proficiency and full bilingualism enhances rather than impedes the education and personal development of minority children. Teachers of language and all subjects should cooperate in promoting native language proficiency and encouraging its use at home. (PMJ)

Results of a 10-item oral language test presented only orally, orally with pictures, and orally with concrete aids replicate earlier research findings showing that bilingual children manipulate language more easily than unilinguals. Unilinguals' errors were due to incomplete development while bilinguals' were caused by that and first-language…