The discourse interaction between adult and child was examined in terms of the content of their utterances, and the linguistic and contextual relations between their messages, in order to investigate how children use the information from adults' input sentences to form contingent responses. (Author/BW)

Vocabulary development is essential for a student to become a good reader. By learning new words in terms of meaning and use, the student can increase his/her listening, speaking, reading, and writing vocabularies. A student may increase vocabulary development when communicating informally with others or formally within a classroom setting. This…

Children encounter differences in language environments at home and at school; the school's role is discussed in language education. (JB)

Preliminary version of this article presented at the meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 1971. Research and preparation of the paper supported in part by an Intramural Grant from the Regents of the University of California to T. Kenney. (VM)

Teachers should not try to impose on children the language of adults, but they can provide models for them to grow naturally into as they become adults. The child knows his language when he comes to school, and the teacher should try to build on what he knows, not blunder into opposition to it. (Author)

Studies show many experts believe that there is no significant difference between the age when a boy begins to communicate verbally and when a girl begins. (SW)

Criticism of much of the previous research into the syntax of children's language. (RD)

Describing what children at the preoperational stage know about writing, spelling, and words, the authors make specific recommendations for ways language arts teachers can build instruction that is based on this knowledge. (SK)

Discusses three experiments investigating the development of word-by-word comprehension in 5-, 7-, and 10-year olds. Subjects monitored for target words in a sentence. Variable included types of monitoring tasks and distribution and context of target words. Results are discussed in terms of the types of comprehension processes various tasks…

This study aimed to determine the average ages at which children imitate, produce and comprehend passive constructions. Previous findings that imitation precedes comprehension, which precedes production, are confirmed in this study for children aged 3-8. (CHK)