The special issue with 21 articles reports a study by the Central Institute of the Deaf (Missouri) to design a small, "ideal" program for elementary age deaf children, given the condition that cost, staff, materials, and space were no problems. (SB)

A review of studies into the neurological aspects of reading disabilities indicates that two positions have been taken with regard to the brain and reading: (1) language skills are generally considered to be the function of the left hemisphere of the brain; and (2) very poor reading may be related to bilateral spatial processing for both boys and…

This special issue containing 10 articles addresses the application of technology, including educational media, telecommunication, and computers, to the education of hearing impaired students.

A clinical method of assessing speech and language development in preschool children is described as 62 three-year-old children were assessed by a pediatrician, a speech therapist, and a psychologist. (Author)

The author describes the Developmental By-Pass (DBP) Instructional technology for teaching secondary and college learning disabled (LD) students by allowing students to bypass ordering and organizational deficits. (SB)

Observations showed that the use of signs did not impede the development of speech. Instead it seems to increase the children's skill in lipreading, although the early use of written language may play a part by facilitating the encoding of lip movements. (Author)

Describes five videotapes drawn from a conference on teacher education. The tapes discuss alternative ways of viewing current problems in reading and language development, the "Breakthrough to Literacy" program developed in Great Britain, language codes, language as a resource, and language as a part of human behavior. (FL)

Defines the approach of textlinguistics to the study of TV messages' comprehension, starting from the basic criterion that comprehension depends on the global semantic structure of the message and on the situational context of the communicants. On this basis the potential of television as a tool for language instruction is discussed. (MES)

Described is how the utilization of the science classroom for the development of language skills, particularly in the area of writing. Suggested activities include crossword puzzles, poetry, puppet shows, comic books and letter writing. (Author/DS)

Describes ERIC resources that present research on children's language usage and development and that suggest activities for the promotion of language development. (ET)

Discusses background information about the deaf that may be useful to reading teachers working with older deaf students; suggests additional sources of information on sign language and reading instruction for the deaf. (MKM)

A nonverbal paradigm for assessing conservation based on an operant discrimination learning procedure is described. Initial results suggest that young children who could not conserve within the traditional verbal procedure were more likely to demonstrate conservation within the nonverbal paradigm and that traditional Piagetian tasks are verbally…

Discusses language as a goal and a means to learning and presents strategies for in-school development of language across the curriculum in the context of consideration of effects on students. (HTH)

Discusses the development of drama as a learning tool for children's language development. Applies James Britton's methods of language classification to the construction of functional categories of language that operate within the framework of drama and creative dramatics. (RL)

Discusses the implications for language teaching of Chomskyean and transformational theory. The notions of deep structure, linguistic theory building, and inutility of a corpus are far less interesting than the view of language as rule-governed behavior and language learning as hypothesis-testing. Rationalist v behaviorist theories are discussed.…