Examines early literacy development as embedded within social contexts. Stresses the importance of approaches to teaching that build on children's earlier classroom experiences and strive to create literate communities in classrooms. (RAE)

A longitudinal study of language development is being conducted in which ten recordings of spontaneous speech are being made of l28 children at 3-month intervals. Children were stratified with respect to age, sex, birth month, social and educational family background and family occupations. A matrix was constructed for two groups of children, with…

A study was conducted to determine criteria to measure successful language development and to determine what factors might be considered to be the determiners of this development. Subjects were 16 children, aged 3 years 3 months, selected on an intuitive basis from the 64 children in the older age group to represent the full range of development,…

Discusses the importance of providing opportunities for children to learn through talk with an adult and contains excerpts from transcripts of parent-child and teacher-student conversations. (DF)