Examined the role of phonological memory and phonological awareness in foreign language word learning. Measures of phonological memory and phonological awareness were administered to 58 Chinese-speaking 4-year-olds four times over 2 years. Results suggest phonological memory may support foreign language word learning but phonological awareness may…

Pragmatic language awareness contributes to an integrated language arts curriculum for literacy acquisition. Teaching pragmatic awareness includes encouraging readers to devote conscious attention to metalinguistic aspects of text by thinking and talking about the message functions that the text uses. Lists seven approaches for teaching pragmatic…

This study on code-mixing focuses on the influence of Spanish in Nahuatl discourse as revealed in narratives produced by adults and children. Results indicate differences in frequency of content word embedded language (Spanish), lexical items across grade level (for children), grade level attained (for adults), and correlations (for children)…

Investigates the extent to which traditional regional characteristics persist in the linguistic repertoire of school children and then on the manner in which dialectal feature and the level of children's awareness of them interact with learning to read and write. Data from a sample of children in the first to fourth years of elementary schools…

Observations of spontaneous behaviors and comments of one child pertinent to emergent literacy are reported. The following areas are addressed: letter/numeral naming; the meaning of print; the communicative function of print; conception of meaning-units or words; language games; awareness of the sound of language; and the relationship between…

Discusses four general areas of linguistics studies that are particularly relevant to literacy issues: (1) discourse analysis, including text analysis, spoken and written language, and home and school discourse; (2) relationships between speech and writing, the distance between dialects and written norms, and developmental writing; (3)…

Describes a two-year research project in Portugal for the purpose of helping teachers cope with the problem of teaching Cape Verdian children (nonnative speakers of Portuguese) to read Portuguese successfully. (SR)

Some teaching and learning that occurred in the English on the Job Project, a long-term English-as-a-Second-Language program for immigrant employees in Australia, is reported. Language awareness, which was intentionally exploited or developed to increase second-language (L2) proficiency, had a significant positive effect on L2 development.…

To study whether metalinguistic benefits of childhood bilingualism flow on to reading acquisition, word awareness skills were developed in one group of monolingual English children and in another "marginal bilingual" group. Results strengthen the argument for a causal role in reading acquisition for word awareness. (Contains 63 references.)…

Seventeen children (ages 5-7) with specific language impairment (SLI) were compared to age-matched (AM) and language-matched (LM) groups on measures of metalinguistic skill. SLI children's performance was worse than AM peers and indistinguishable from younger LM children, suggesting that morphological awareness is more closely allied to oral…

Incompleteness of competence--lack of command of certain second-language (L2) aspects--and divergence--interlanguage representations of L2 properties different from native representations--are distinct states of grammatical competence, as seen in French and English speakers of Italian (L2). Discussion argues that competence differences reflect…

Examined children's metapragmatic knowledge, or knowledge about linguistic forms. Children were read narratives in which a protagonist made a request. Children evaluated the request, explained their judgments, and suggested alternative formulations of the request. Findings showed that five year olds had metapragmatic knowledge and that…

Normally hearing children (aged 4--10) and hearing-impaired children (aged 6--14) were tested on word awareness skills, such as the distinction between words and their referents, and their ability to provide explicit definitions of word. Older children performed significantly better than younger children, and normally hearing children performed…

Suggests a culture-independent analytical framework, based on natural semantic metalanguage developed by the author, to explore and analyze six Japanese culture-specific and culturally revealing concepts and show how the semantic metalanguage helps to make the concepts clear and facilitate better insight into Japanese culture and society. (102…

Presents a new methodology for studying children's and adults' metalinguistic knowledge of the cohesive, discourse-level properties of spoken language. Studies the abilities of subjects to detect and then to explain discourse repairs in narratives. Considers why the discourse-level functions of the markers are not open to reflection. (HB)