Discusses a study to determine the extent to which education results in enduring effects in the area of verbal skills. Research is based on a causal model of the enduring effects of education. Findings indicate that previous studies have seriously overestimated the enduring effects of education. (Author/DB)

Explored the interplay between gestures and words in the early vocabulary of 12 normally developing Italian children at 16 and 20 months of age. Focused on spontaneous production of verbal and gestural types and tokens to assess the diversity and semantic content of the verbal and gestural vocabularies. Results indicated that gestures were used…

A cross-sequential design was used to examine changes related to aging in adults with and without Down syndrome (ns = 55 and 75, respectively). Adults received yearly neuropsychological and medical evaluations. Support for precocious aging in adults with Down syndrome was evident only on a test of verbal fluency, with weaker support obtained on a…

Identification of correctly produced and misarticulated /w,r,l,j/ was examined in 12 children, aged 3:6-7:5. The children, their parents, and raters were more successful in identifying correctly produced semivowels than misarticulated ones. Both normal children with developmental substitutions and articulation-impaired children demonstrated…

Using a teacher-researcher perspective, a study assessed a preschool storytelling program designed to promote children's narrative development. The program included workshops, child-teacher conferences, and adult and child performances. A preschool class of 17 four-year-olds listened to adult-told stories, rehearsed their own stories with a…

Used a pretest-posttest control group design to study the effects of interactive storybook software on the verbal development of 60 kindergarteners from low income families. Found that, for the 25 children who interacted with the software a minimum of 300 minutes over 7 weeks, there was a significant increase in verbal ability. (Author/KB)

Classroom second language instruction can be characterized as one of the following: focus-on-formS, focus-on-meaning, or focus-on-form. The book titled "Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition" (Doughty & Williams, 1998) argues for the desirability of focus-on-form over focus-on-formS and focus-on-meaning, discussing the efficacy…

A 20-minute videotape sample was obtained of the language interactions between 20 Down syndrome children (ages 38 to 107 months) and their mothers during informal playtime. Linguistic utterances of mothers and children were coded according to the following language categories: query, declarative, imperative, performative, feedback, imitation,…

The study reports quasilongitudinal data on 10 children at 2:0 and 2:5, and another 10 children at 2:9 and 3:3. The analysis included word-initial and word-final phonetic inventories of consonant singletons and clusters and a summary of the relative frequency of seven word shapes. (Author/JDD)

The Monongalia County (West Virginia) Even Start Program is a comprehensive, rural, home-based family literacy program that provides families with adult literacy education, parenting education, and early childhood education. Although all Even Start programs conduct some home visits, the Monongalia County program is unique in that home visits are…

To more thoroughly analyze and compare the types of dictionaries being used by Japanese college students in three college engineering classes, two kinds of surveys were designed. The first was a general survey about purchase, use and preferences regarding electronic dictionaries. The second survey asked questions about how various computerised…

Whereas former research on academic discourse has paid a great deal of attention to writing and its hedging strategies, this paper aims to show that a complementary and equally important feature of academic spoken discourse is the use of modal certainty. An examination of modal selections in two American Dissertation Defenses additionally reveals…

Examines vocabulary growth and development, looking at conventional vocabulary instruction and its outcomes. Evidence that word list drills do not promote vocabulary growth effectively is presented, and suggestions are given for fostering increased vocabulary. Promoting wide reading is advocated as the best approach. (SLD)

An examination of the effectiveness of English-Ukrainian partial immersion programs in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba looks at research already done in five areas: student achievement in English language skills, Ukrainian language skills, academic subjects other than English or Ukrainian, students' cognitive development, and students' social…

This study investigated the effectiveness of a natural environment language training procedure that combined the mand-model procedure and the time delay procedure for the acquisition of noun signs and for the spontaneous use of the signs acquired. One autistic boy, aged 5 years, 4 months with no verbal imitation skills and few movement imitation…