Compared to 19 controls, 21 dyslexic boys, age 11-18, were as successful in naming parts of objects in drawings, and they had no distinctive difficulty over homophones or homographs. However, subjects did produce more distortions of words, examples of inappropriate usage, incomplete sentences, repetitions, and other errors. (Author/JDD)

Describes the components, course objectives, texts and materials, and structure and assignment of The American University's translation course, which hones students' foreign language competence through its focus on the short-term goal of attention to subtleties of meaning in the foreign language and nuance of expression in English. (CB)

The findings from research on written and oral summarization are discussed under three headings: summarizers' strategies, improving summarizers' performance, and the assessment of summary quality. Objective measures of summary quality used by researchers are described, and ways these measures could be adapted for use in higher education assessment…

Ten individuals (ages 14-51) with autism participated in 6 experimental facilitated communication sessions, 2 with no help, 2 with partial assistance, and 2 with full assistance. Within each session, the facilitator had knowledge of the experimental stimuli on half of the trials. Results revealed no cases of correct responding independent of…

The impact of a disordered phonological system (expressive or receptive) on language development is examined. Research results and guidelines are presented for identification of critical intelligibility and phonological awareness deficiencies and for intervention. Options for expediting intelligibility gains and research findings on enhancing…

Middle school students (n=39) with learning disabilities completed written and oral science composition tasks. Results indicated better overall oral than written performance, use of more sentences (though shorter) in written than oral presentations, and no significant differences between oral and written word count or thought units. Little…

This study explored the conflict resolution ability of 30 children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 30 children with normal language (NL) in grades 3 through 7. Children with SLI suggested fewer types of strategies to resolve hypothetical conflicts than their NL peers. The groups did not differ in the number of strategy types used in…

Public school speech-language clinicians (n=266) in California were surveyed regarding methods for assessing the language of children ages 4-9. Results are discussed in terms of formal and informal expressive and receptive language assessment and ways in which new assessment tools are identified and incorporated. (Author/JDD)

The performance of 20 children with educable mental retardation (ages 8 to 12) and 20 verbal mental age-matched nonretarded controls was compared on identifying emotional facial expressions and producing the equivalent word adjectives. There were no significant differences between the two groups in general, despite the fact that children with…

The use of the language experience approach to teach readiness and beginning reading and writing skills in preschool programs is explored. The value of this holistic approach is illustrated with a case study of a preschool child with a severe expressive language delay and phonological disorder. (DB)

This article identifies speech and language goals to improve the safety of school-age deaf children. These include vocalizing or clearly communicating "no!"; communicating a general physical description of another person; communicating their own first and last name, address, and telephone number to a hearing person; and communicating about…

Data from two-year-old children and mothers were collected concerning age at which she began to read to child, frequency of home reading, number of stories read per week, frequency of visits by child to library. Picture-book reading exposure was more strongly related to receptive than expressive language. Age of onset of home reading routines was…

The study compared results of the Preschool Language Scale, administered to 214 rural and 214 suburban children in Nebraska. Both groups scored above age level, but a higher percentage of rural children failed a wide range of verbal ability and auditory comprehension items. The scale did not meet criteria for nonbiased, ecologically valid…

This review of research on language development of hearing children of deaf parents identified three areas of focus: (1) oral language development; (2) sign language development; and (3) mode of communication--oral and/or manual. Areas of future study are suggested. (Author/DB)

The consistency of parental reports of expressive vocabulary and word combinations with observed expressive language among 21- to 27- month-old children regularly exposed to English and Spanish was investigated. The number of different words parents reported correlated with the number of different words children used during a 30-minute videotape.…