Researchers studying emerging literacy have begun building a theory of literacy development that links the processes of reading and writing. Their findings suggest that a child's emerging literacy is based on three factors: a functional expectation for print to make logical sense; an expectation of how language operates in alternate contexts; and…

Offers some conversational suggestions (modeled on a typical day in the life of the preschool) intended to motivate children to communicate and to build a better relationship between pupil and teacher. (Author/ED)

This paper provides a brief outline of some of the constituents of speech, language, and universal stages of the development of talking in children up to the age of 2 1/2 years. Mention is made of theories put forward to account for universal aspects of speech and language development; recent research into the way adults talk to very small…

The connections among language learning, language education, and children's wordplay are explored in this book. Each chapter examines some aspect of the interrelations between wordplay activities and the goals of language education. The book is divided into three sections, with the first section exploring wordplay and language learning in the…

This study reports on ways student under-achievement is being dealt with in the Bilingual Program of Jackson, New Jersey in grades 1-5. The study is limited to students in one school and was carried out during one 12-month period. It focuses on the following issues: (1) teaching methods which are best suited to solve the problems of student…

Two children's spontaneous utterances containing the comparative structure are examined for their semantic content. Many comparatives are found to encode the notion "A has property X," and this use is often found in reference to the presence of X to an extreme, rather than a non-extreme, extent. The uses of the comparative are analyzed…

To determine whether black children who speak a nonstandard dialect have difficulty in spelling because of the dialect features of their vocabulary, spelling tests were administered to 66 black English-speaking children in the first, second, and third grades. The results indicated that children who spoke black dialect exhibited spelling…

The ability of young children to communicate at the time they produce their first words was studied, with particular reference to the question of whether children are able to modify their requests depending on the adult's response. The subjects were four children ranging in age from 15 to 18 months; the data were their requests of adults coded…

INCLUDED IN THIS REPORT ARE BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS OF 36 CURRENT, PROJECTED, OR RECENTLY COMPLETED SOCIAL DIALECT STUDIES IN ENGLISH. THE THIRD IN A SERIES, REPORT NO. 3 COMPLETELY SUPERSEDES THE PREVIOUS REPORTS (WHICH WERE ENTITLED "CURRENT SOCIAL DIALECT RESEARCH AT AMERICAN HIGHER INSTITUTIONS, NOS. 1 AND 2"). THE PROJECTS OUTLINED IN THIS REPORT…

This study focused on elementary children's shift from syntagmatic to paradigmatic word association and their consistency in responding again with the same word. Subjects, 128 children ranging from first through sixth grade in the Model Laboratory School (Richmond, Kentucky), were presented with 20 structural words and 20 lexical words. The…

A study was designed to identify highly teachable composing skills that have a strong statistical relationship with composition quality across various grade levels. Sample compositions were randomly selected from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (1972). A total of 750 compositions written by 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old-students (250…

THE CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN HUMAN LEARNING WAS ESTABLISHED IN JANUARY, 1964 AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA TO "DEVELOP A CONTINUOUS AND CLOSE-WORKING RELATIONSHIP AMONG PSYCHOLOGISTS IN VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY DOING RESEARCH ON HUMAN LEARNING AND ON PROCESSES RELATED TO HUMAN LEARNING." THE AIM OF THE CENTER IS TO SERVE BOTH THE…

The effect of verbal labeling in a serial position short term memory task was investigated. Forty female college students were given 16 trials each. Eight trials involved only central items which had to be recalled. The other eight trials involved both central and incidental items. Half of the subjects verbalized the names of the central items as…

Infants raised the pitch of their vocalizations when stimulated by vocalizing parents. Nonvocal stimulation did not repeat the effect. Intonation contours did not change during different conditions. The pitch of the parents' vocalizations also rose during vocal interaction. Changes in infant pitch were interpreted as a function of imitation.…

Research is being conducted to determine the factors behind linguistic retardation in children. A first question raised was whether the linguistic system of the deviant child is qualitatively different from that of a normal child. A matching-up of deviant and normal children according to linguistic level suggests that the onset of base syntax may…