The subject of this case report is a two-year, seven-month-old girl with de Lange syndrome, normal intelligence, and age-appropriate language skills. She demonstrated initial delays in gross motor skills and in receptive and expressive language but responded well to intensive speech and language intervention, as well as to physical therapy.…

This paper reports on a 15-year follow-up of the linguistic and cognitive profile of a woman with standard trisomy 21 (Down syndrome). The follow-up found recent rapid deterioration in receptive and productive language skills. However, basic phonological and morphosyntactic skills are preserved. Her changing profile mirrors that found in aging…

Tested English and Spanish receptive vocabulary of 396 Hispanic preschoolers in Miami. English scores were more than one-and-a-half standard deviations below the mean. The mean score in Spanish was 95 compared to a mean of 100 for the Spanish norming population. Factors other than vocabulary knowledge that might account for the lower scores were…

This paper discusses strategies of intercomprehension in the context of the promotion of plurilingualism and intercultural competence in Europe. Plurilingualism and intercomprehension are concepts of particular importance in the multilingual and multicultural European context. These are explicit aims and requirements of the European Union when…

Analyzes the key components of the Precision Teaching technique: pinpointing (identifying learning channels and defining correct and incorrect responses), counting behavior in real time, and charting the pace of learning. Includes a case study describing the Precision Teaching of receptive object identification with a 3-year-old with autistic…

Technology helps students develop coping strategies to deal with various learning differences. Assistive technology is a common intervention provided to students with disabilities and generally varies depending on student need. Within gifted education, the use of computers and technology is concentrated on curricular applications and activities…

The paper describes the application of a computer-assisted writing program in a special high school for learning disabled and dyslexic students and reports on a study of the program's effectiveness. Particular advantages of the Macintosh Computer for such a program are identified including use of the mouse pointing tool, graphic icons to identify…

Language training for the non-verbal or language delayed child should utilize feedback to reinforce correct responses and should closely follow the syntactical development of normal children. The two basic areas of language training are receptive and expressive. Receptive language training includes attending and responding, following single phase…

A severely handicapped four-year-old with Down syndrome received training in comprehension and expressive use of Rebus symbols representing new words and generalization of symbol use to the classroom. Significant increases in comprehension and expression scores and generalized symbol use occurred. Development of verbal expressive skills were also…

It is argued that dictation is a neglected technique for second-language training. Students' error patterns at three levels are presented to show how the technique can be used effectively for both teaching and testing, and to develop integrative skills and accuracy in both listening and writing. (Author/MSE)

Describes the practice teaching experience of a profoundly deaf woman in a mainstream junior high science classroom. Although problems had to be solved in communication, classroom management, and teaching methods, students and teachers described the outcome as educationally positive with additional benefits in students' non-academic learning. (DHP)

This article examines several acoustical variables, such as noise, reverberation, and speaker-listener distance, which can deleteriously affect speech perception in classrooms. The effects of these variables on speech perception abilities in children with and without hearing loss are explored and appropriate classroom acoustical criteria are…

Learning to read is a complex process and a number of factors affect a child's success in beginning reading. This complexity increases when a child's home language differs from that of the school and when the child comes from a home with limited economic resources. This article discusses factors that have been shown to contribute to children's…

The monograph describes a systematic attempt to develop language behavior in a nonverbal autistic 4.5-year-old boy who was essentially unresponsive to environmental stimuli of any kind. The 45-session intervention focused on teaching him to attend, increasing his responsiveness to people, effecting discriminative responses to a variety of…

Although testing language has traditionally taken the form of testing knowledge about language, the idea of testing communicative competence is becoming recognized as being of great importance in second language learning. Communicative language tests are intended to be a measure of how the testees are able to use language in real life situations.…