Reports on two studies that examined the natural process of word learning in children 4-11 years old. The children hear the new words in a conversation, a story, and paired with a definition. Results indicate that children at all ages could acquire a partial semantic representation from a single exposure. (SED)

Describes the formation of the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES), a system formed to foster the sharing of computerized data on language acquisition. Details the governance of the system, the nature of the database, the shape of the coding conventions, and the types of computer programs being developed. (SED)

Describes a study which examined the relationship between mother's speech and the rate of child syntax growth for 22 two-and-a-half-year-old children. Results suggest that linguistic experience does contribute to syntax development but that the relation between linguistic input and language growth is different for different domains of language and…

By analyzing children's verbal responses to various types of questions, understanding was increased about the impact of classroom questions upon young children's oral language development. (MM)

Describes a study showing that mentally retarded children and mentally normal children do not differ fundamentally in cognitive development within the framework of a particular cognitive training. (Text is in French.) (AM)

This research disputes the traditional position on babbling by showing that the phonetic content of babbled utterances exhibits many of the same preferences for certain kinds of phonetic elements and sequences that have been found in the production of meaningful speech by children in later stages of language development. (Author/RM)

In this longitudinal investigation of the emerging grammar of seven children, differences in linguistic acquisition were observed. Analyses revealed two distinct styles of syntactic acquisition that appeared to be sex- and speed-related with specific ties to particular utterance types and grammatical-relational specification. (Author/RM)

This case study of two Latvian children attempts to show how the parental terms for"mummy" and "daddy" in Latvian are acquired, paying particular attention to the changing relationship between the input and output forms during the acquisition process. (Author/RM)

Questions the purpose of having students "write" in class as a standard practice at the conclusion of a unit of instruction. (RL)

Teachers often become dominated by the demands of subject disciplines and fail to provide opportunities for pupils to learn by talking, reading, writing about experiences they meet, for in this way they will come to terms with subject disciplines. (Author)

Knowledge of what constitutes development toward language maturity in school-age children should enable us to make substantial improvements in the language component of the curriculum. (Author)

Data seem to indicate that for children disadvantaged with respect to social class and ethnic background there is a functional interaction between art and language which allows such children to give verbal expression to their conceptual development. (Authors)

Reading skills change developmentally, from acquisition of decoding skills to reading-to-learn. This article discusses the non-instructional and instructional factors that associate with acquisition, and the non-instructional and instructional factors that associate with reading-to-learn. (Author/BW)

A comprehension task employing English animate third person pronouns was run on 100 children from three to seven years of age. Results show that comphrehension of forms beyond chance level first appears at age five, with continuing improvement through ages six and seven. Mastery of gender distinction preceded number and case. (Author/PJM)