Vocabulary diversity is a measure either of the language spoken within a fixed time period or of the total utterances, sentences, or words. To measure children's language development as revealed by the diversity of their spoken expression, a comparison was made of the vocabulary of 15 first-grade children of average ability, of first-grade primers…

In an age of scientific method much of any individual's thinking is quantitative. He lives in a world in which every situation involves concepts of quantity, amount, size, or number. He employs number language, that is, number names and signs to express his quantitative ideas. These various number names and signs constitute the medium for his…

Since the mastery of any subject matter depends on learning its key concepts--its language--content area teachers should use innovative vocabulary development exercises to help their students master the language of the subject area. Teachers should try to coordinate vocabulary study with other learning tasks instead of depending on dull,…

Twenty-four children each at the age levels of 6, 9, 12, and 15 years were tested on four types of experimentally determined conceptual clues in a study of concept identification and, therefore, language comprehension. Superordinates, similars, parts, and locations were selected as clue words, and the four clues were combined into all possible…

This paper reports two studies that investigate differences in comprehension monitoring skills between good and poor comprehenders. Two groups of 9- to 10-year-olds, who were matched for reading vocabulary and word recognition skills but who differed in comprehension skill, were selected. In the first study, in which the children were required to…

Investigated whether low-income mothers learned to interact with their preschoolers in ways that fostered narrative skills. Mothers of intervention children were encouraged to elicit questions, encourage longer narratives, and participate in narrative conversation. Assessment of children's pre- and post-intervention narrative and vocabulary skills…

Forty-three children, 2;11 to 5;6, described six familiar activities: making cookies, going to the grocery, having a birthday party, going to a restaurant, getting dressed, and having a fire drill. They described each event three times. The descriptions were elicited by initially asking "What happens when...?" or "What do you do when...?" and then…

To discover whether linguistic retardation shows itself in vocabulary concerned with orectic characteristics of children and whether a relationship exists between linguistic retardation and orectic immaturity, children were studied (ages 8 to 16) from 11 schools for the hearing impaired. Discussed as background is the general linguistic…

This article describes how a first-grade teacher used poetry to provide students of diverse ability levels with reading and language activities that stimulated their interest and improved basic skills. Activities with poetry included reading the poems aloud individually and as a group, discussing and analyzing the poems' words and meanings, and…

Reviews current research on free voluntary reading and discusses its benefits for vocabulary development, reading ability, writing style, spelling, grammar, pleasure, personal discovery, and literacy. Positive correlations are made between free voluntary reading and academic achievement and second-language acquisition. Eleven relevant documents…

Discusses evidence that social understanding informs word learning in infants. Asks: (1) Is genuine social understanding necessary for word learning?; (2) Are social clues criterial for infants' learning?; (3) Can word learning proceed without aid of social understanding?; and (4) Is social clue processing too difficult for everyday word learning?…

The strong relationship between knowledge of vocabulary and reading achievement leads to the conclusion that knowing the meaning of words in a passage enables the reader to answer questions about the passage. The goal of vocabulary instruction is the acquisition of the concepts represented by words as well as the ability to recognize and analyze…

Language skill attrition refers to the loss of any language or portion of a language whether it be the declining use of mother tongue skills, the replacement of one language by another in language contact situations, the deterioration of language in the neurologically impaired or elderly, or the death of whole languages. In this paper, language…

Few instruments have been developed for evaluation of expressive vocabulary in early childhood. This project attempted to develop an instrument sufficiently structured to call forth appropriate verbalization yet varied enough to elicit a wide range of responses, and to use the instrument to test whether socioeconomic class groupings can be…

A set of procedures for coding internal state words (those words representing mental states and perceptual experiences), developed for application to data on the language of young children and those with whom they converse, is described in this report. The report first discusses the rationale for studying cultural variation in vocabulary use, the…