We report results from children learning to read in one of four different languages: Croatian, English, Estonian and Swedish. The languages all have an alphabetical script but vary greatly on the dimension deep-shallow (or complexity-simplicity, or opacity-transparency), i.e., how close orthography and phonology are related. These languages also…

Previous cross-language research has focused on L1 phonological processing and its relation to L2 reading. Less extensive is the research on the effect that L1 orthographic processing skill has on L2 reading and spelling. This study was designed to investigate how reading and spelling acquisition in English (L2) is influenced by phonological and…

Investigates effects longitudinally of phonological processing and oral language abilities on children's reading and reading disabilities. Compares second grade good and poor readers on measures of oral language and phonological processing taken in kindergarten. Suggests that language-based theories of reading and reading disabilities must include…

Two experiments involving Chinese 2nd graders and 4th graders investigated the use of subcharacter information to learn to pronounce unfamiliar semantic-phonetic compound characters. Experiment 1 confirmed that children can use the information in both tone-different and onset-different characters to learn character pronunciations and showed that…

Discusses observations of children's efforts to move from spoken language to written language and the acquisition of cohesion in first and second grade students. (HTH)

The results of a research project designed to study possible uses of the computer in the language arts classroom, and to identify the effect on children's cognitive and linguistic development are presented. Subjects were 22 second graders who used two different software programs (Storia Chiusa and Storia Aperta) to complete stories. (CFM)

Examines the source of poor readers' comprehension failures in spoken sentences containing complex syntactic structures. Although research literature indicates that the difficulties poor readers display are usually associated with some aspect of phonological processing, other components of language processing may be involved. (58 references)…

Reports on a two-part study of second-grade African American students' uses of various forms of the /-s/ suffix, replicating J. Torrey's 1972 study on the correlation of language and educational achievement. Findings suggest the need to reflect diversity and flexibility in design and implementation of assessment and instruction materials and the…

Investigates second grade children's ability to understand the use of deictic terms (devices in language that convey information about the communicative situation) in three types of tasks: oral language, written language, and picture selection, and concludes that the difficulty of a word with deictic content depends largely upon the discourse…

Investigated the relationship between children's failures to produce unambiguous utterances and the mental effort demands in children (ages five, six, seven, and nine years), using finger-tapping and message production tasks, separately and simultaneously. Findings suggest that the relative effort requirements of communication decrease with…

The aim of the present study was to investigate idiom comprehension in school-age Italian children with different reading comprehension skills. According to our hypothesis, the level of a child's text comprehension skills should predict his/her ability to understand idiomatic meanings. Idiom comprehension in fact requires children to go beyond a…

Reports on a study of word recognition in second grade, fourth grade, sixth grade, and college students, which investigated characteristics of word processing (holistic versus component) at various stages of reading development. (AM)

An experiment in a grade 2 French immersion program compared performance of a group-taught music lessons totally integrated into classroom instruction and a group not given music instruction. Pre- and post-tests of tonal-rhythmic patterns and form that have commonalities with pronunciation, oral grammar, vocabulary, and reading comprehension found…