Despite strenuous attempts made by the New Labour government in the UK to progress towards its goal of eradicating child poverty by 2020, educational outcomes for disadvantaged children remain depressed compared to those of more advantaged children. The fact that children from poorer socio-economic backgrounds are at much greater risk of language…

Preschool and early elementary science provides engaging opportunities for integrated content-based language learning. This instruction uses the concepts of other content areas as a springboard for language acquisition and self-expression. It is through the active interpretation of content standards by foreign language teachers that the ideas and…

The course of language acquisition from infancy to public primary school was followed in a sample of 56 Finnish children to examine precursors to reading at first grade. Structural equation modeling of continuity suggested effects from growth in early vocabulary to mastery of inflectional forms at preschool age. The early language directly…

The study examined actual communicative expressions of five 3-year-old profoundly, prelingually deaf children and their mothers, along with nonverbal contextual information. Each subject was videotaped in the home while interacting with the mother in toy play and usual daily activity. Results identified more than 4,500 communicative expressions,…

This annotated booklist for parents and child caregivers is intended as a guide for using picture books to help children develop language skills. It differs from other lists which emphasize learning to listen; here the purpose is to facilitate talking. Each listed title is followed by a description of how the book might be used to teach a specific…

The book reports on a descriptive study of communicative strategies used by 15 deaf preschoolers. Video recording with simultaneous direct observations were made once a month in a kindergarten for deaf and hearing children. Children were observed during periods from .5 to 2 years. Descriptions of communicative strategies are based on…

Investigators determined that recent research, showing no sex differences as to the age at which children acquire language, actually may have employed techniques inferior to those used in earlier studies, which showed that girls were more advanced. (MP)

Suggests ways to create dramatic play environments in which children can have experiences with all the language arts. (DD)

Forty-four language delayed preschoolers received either direct instruction or interactive instruction. After 8 months, children in both settings improved significantly and substantially on syntactic and semantic measures. There were no differences between the two groups at posttest nor any significant aptitude by treatment interactions for…

Analysis of videotaped interaction of 20 hearing impaired preschoolers showed that Ss were acquiring language using the same semantic categories, syntactic forms, and functional uses as normally developing children but at later chronological ages. All of the hearing-impaired children were developing a rule system consistent with patterns of normal…

The nature and development of discourse topic skills in preschool children are examined and illustrated by observations of very young children. Possible social and cognitive components are explored with implications for language-disordered populations. (CL)

Two norm-referenced tests--Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language (TACL) and Preschool Language Scale (PLS) and one criterion-referenced task, the Basic Two-Choice Object Discrimination Task--were administered to nine severely handicapped preschoolers. Overall, performance and behavioral ratings tended to be best for the Two-Choice Task and…

A simultaneous treatments design was used to compare effects of modeling and corrected practice on generative language acquisition of six preschoolers. New syntactic forms used to describe agent-action-object stimuli were taught concurrently. All six children learned both new syntactic forms. Corrected practice produced a faster rate of learning.…

Analyses of play suggested more sophisticated levels in segregated than integrated settings. There were no differences between the two settings in appropriateness of play, type of interaction, percentage of attending to teacher-directed learning activities, or quality or quantity of their language in the two settings. (Author/CL)

The separate effects of child neglect, abuse, and their interaction upon language development as measured by the Preschool Language Scale were examined in four groups of children (N=79). Findings suggest that child neglect may be the critical type of maltreatment associated with language delay. (Author/CL)