A study was conducted to: (1) gather data which would permit researchers to describe the teaching behaviors and language characteristics of parents during literacy events with their children; (2) analyze these data for positive or negative influences of parents' oral language on their children's participation in the reading/writing activities; and…

Encouraging the appreciation and assessment of children's language and communication, from birth to the age of eight, is the focus of this volume. Following an introduction, chapter 2 elaborates on the interactionist framework, citing recent studies related to the acquisition of oral language and literacy, while the next two chapters describe…

This study is a detailed analysis of the phonological development of Sylvia, a bilingual child, in her acquisition of American English and Brazilian Portuguese from the age of 1 year, 7 months to 3 years, 8 months. The study is divided into four stages: ages 1.7 - 1.9; 1.9 - 2.1; 2.1 - 2.3; and 2.3 - 2.8. Up to the age of 1.9, the same…

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…

The assumption that question-answer sequences consist of two moves was examined using data from recordings of second-grade classrooms in Austin, Texas. Interactions initiated by children's spontaneous questions in informal, small group settings were evaluated. Twenty-nine dialogue samples are presented and analyzed. Four issues in the study of…

A discussion of word acquisition rates and strategies is based upon a 6-month case study of an Estonian-speaking child who gradually and systematically relaxed phonotactic constraints to allow greater complexity in word production. In addition to the cognitive tools of assimilation and accomodation as described by Piaget, the child used a further…

Philippine students in grades K-6, representing different socioeconomic classes, participated in individual elicitation sessions. Using Pilipino (Tagalog) as the language of elicitation, experimenters used pictorial stimuli to elicit specific structures of English grammar, in order to discover if the subjects had mastered these structures. Only…

The nature and extent of code-mixing in the language acquisition process over a 12-month period was studied with a child growing up in a bilingual English-Chichewa (Bantu language) speaking home. Data are examined from age 18 1/2 months to 30 1/2 months. Definitions of code-switching are offered, and an analysis of code-mixing in the speech of the…

This longitudinal study of bilingual language acquisition analyzes the order of acquisition of English grammatical morphemes in a child bilingual in English and Chichewa (a Bantu lanugage of East Central Africa). The order of acquisition obtained is compared to that obtained by Brown (1973) for monolingual English speaking children and that…

In any successful conversation, a speaker must select both what is said and how it is said on the basis of various estimates of the listener's abilities, knowledge and interests. Most research on linguistic input to children has focused on the tendency of speakers to simplify their speech for the younger listener. Little attention has been paid to…

Little is known about how children gain interpersonal access in settings where adults are not present or are unavailable. This study sought to describe children's strategies for access into and withdrawal from peer interactive episodes in a nursery school. Data were collected from direct observations of two groups of children. One group attended…

A group of about 200 students in Malmo, Sweden, was followed through three grades of elementary school (grades 4, 5, and 6) in order to observe the development of their composition writing skills. The project involved three problem areas. (1) "How does the written language develop and how is it viewed by judges?" The data gathered shows…

The hypothesized ability of adult native speakers to understand linguistic ambiguity was tested. An approach developed to determine linguistic competence tested the ability of 90 participants in individual interviews to interpret sentences having the potential for multiple interpretations. The hypothesis was not supported by the data. A hierarchy…

An analysis of the interrelationship of speaking and reading skills in second language acquisition is the object of an experiment described in this article. The hypothesis tested suggests that written stimuli have a negative influence on the formation of speech habits of beginning students. Objectives, methods, and subject and data selection are…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the symbolic languages of movement and drama in terms of their ability to stimulate and expand the oral communication of children in grade two. Included was a substudy to determine the effect of such a program upon the self-actualization of children in grade two. The oral language was studied…