We longitudinally investigated parental language context and infants' language experiences in relation to Dominican American and Mexican American infants' vocabularies. Mothers provided information on parental language context, comprising measures of parents' language background (i.e., childhood language) and current language use during interviews…

Oral language competence (skill in everyday talking and listening) is critical in the early years of school in two key respects: it underpins the transition to literacy in the early years, and is the means by which children form and maintain interpersonal relationships in the school setting. In this paper, the role of oral language competence with…

To study growth in literacy, the literacy events of six preschool children, in which half the enrollees were Head Start children and the other half were tuition students, were videotaped daily for five months. Analysis of the data (including pre- and post-tests) indicated that all six grew in interest and knowledge of written language.…

This classroom research project focused on 10 fifth-grade students, all of whom had been labelled low-average achievers by their school. Students were encouraged to read, write, draw, talk, tell stories, and play freely. Five case studies emerged from the interactions. It became apparent that the children were shaping literature to their…

Describes a project that (1) developed a teacher training curriculum intervention program to create classroom environments conducive to children's literacy development, (2) ascertained the degree to which teachers were able to implement such a program, (3) discerned the observable factors which characterized implementing classrooms, and (4)…