A discussion of the types and uses of stories in second language instruction argues that the inclination to narrate is an omnipresent human phenomenon, whether attributed to nature or to culture. The story is a means of self-expression and communication that describes different forms of narrative, both literary and nonliterary. The uses and…

A study examined the use of a body awareness microcomputer program on young children as a predictor of early reading achievement. Subjects, 58 preschool and kindergarten students (prereaders) from a university laboratory school in the southern region of the United States, were asked to work in the microcomputer center in small groups to identify…

One of 10 documents developed for preschool programs for handicapped children, the manual presents classroom directed home training activities. The activities are based on such principles as the effectiveness of home instruction by a parent and the need for a parent to feel responsibility for the child's learning. Intended to provide teachers of…

A study relating mothers' language styles and techniques of family control to children's cognitive development was conducted with 163 urban Negro mothers from the lower and middle classes and their 4-year-old children. The following conclusions were drawn: (1) There was a significant negative correlation between responses of status-oriented…

This study examines ways in which children verbalize emotional experiences at successive age levels. Four groups of 16 boys and girls each drawn from the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth grades of a middle class private school in New York City were asked to describe happiness, sadness, love, anger, and fear. Raw protocols were scored according to…

A compilation of ideas and teaching methods to be used for remediation of learning problems is presented with skills coded to four different colors of paper. Auditory skills, visual skills, and auditory-visual association (all three both receptive and expressive) are discussed as are non-verbal skills. The stated purposes of this type of…

Some insight into the relationship between language and thought can be achieved through a comparison between American Sign Language and English. This paper discusses several studies on this topic and defines some of the problems. The author feels that the deaf using American Sign Language cannot be considered linguistically deficient. A structural…

This study investigated the relationship between dialect usage and performance on four language tasks designed to reflect features developmental in nature: articulation, grammatical closure, auditory discrimination, and sentence comprehension. Predictor and criterion language tasks were administered to 90 kindergarten, first-, and second-grade…

This book provides a summary of past and cutting-edge research on the acquisition of language by young children. It lends support to the behavioralist paradigm of language acquisition, namely, that maternal rewards and corrections should be integrated with perceptual, cognitive, and social learning conceptualizations in a skill-learning approach…

English-as-a-Second-Language students in Japan were tested at the beginning and the end of the school year to examine changes in word associations and grammatical suffix knowledge. Results showed an average vocabulary gain of 330 words, a poor knowledge of the allowable suffixes for the verbs learned, and 19 to 25 percentage points more receptive…

Maintains that educators need to dignify the language and cognitive experiences of African-American children. Asserts that African-American culture emphasizes charismatic and stylistic uses of language. Teachers must understand African-American cultural styles if they are to create cultural continuity for African-American children who attend…

This article describes the Kaufman Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills, an assessment of receptive and expressive language skills, pre-academic skills, and articulation of children ages 3 through 6. Three subtests assess vocabulary, numbers, letters and words, and articulation. Its administration, standardization, reliability, and…

The authors examined (a) the extent to which kindergarten estimates of core language functions predicted teacher ratings of behavior problems in each of the child's first 4 years of elementary school and (b) the ability of core language measures to predict concurrent behavior problems at each of the early elementary school grades studied.…

This study examined receptive and expressive language as a precursor of maladaptive behavior in African-American, inner-city children. It compared the adaptive and maladaptive behavior scores of 202 children--most from single-parent and low-income families--from District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) at age 12 to their scores on similar…

Humor is an excellent teaching tool because, in addition to preventing classroom boredom and monotony, it introduces lateral aspects of language such as irony, sarcasm, mockery, elision, ellipsis, and euphemism. Humor in language can be approached interactively or structurally through a variety of activities. It can be used to expand vocabulary,…