Practical considerations associated with local norms development are discussed. A local norming project administering the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised to 398 elementary Mexican--American children is presented in detail. The utility of local norms and their interpretation is discussed in the context of this local project. (Author/BW)

"Focus on Basics" is the quarterly publication of the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy. It presents best practices, current research on adult learning and literacy, and how research is used by adult basic education teachers, counselors, program administrators, and policymakers. "Focus on Basics" is dedicated to…

This report describes a program for improving language and literacy development among young children. The targeted population consisted of public school children, ages three to five, enrolled in an early childhood special education program and an at-risk prekindergarten program. The problems of delayed language and literacy development skills were…

Reports a study aimed at determining the relative capacity of selected Latino student's Spanish and English to transmit an abstract and conceptual communication; 53 students from a junior high school in the southwest were asked to define 13 words taken from the revised Stanford Binet-vocabulary list in either English or Spanish. (Author/JM)

Article extracted from A Practical Guide to the Teaching of French/German/Spanish'' (three separate books), Oxford University Press. (DD)

This study compares the vowel-sound associations of normal and learning disabled children on regularly spelled (major pattern) words, irregularly spelled (minor pattern) words, and nonsense words following the same orthographic structures. The 60 subjects were matched on word recognition ability, as well as age. (Author/PN)

Age-scaled information and vocabulary scores of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and self-ratings of intelligence on a six-point scale were correlated for 190 predominately Caucasian undergraduates. Coefficients of the expected magnitude confirmed validity of the subtests as measures of self-rated intelligence. (Author/CM)

Compared alternate forms of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised for (N=72) preschool children. Results indicated differences between Form L and Form M mean scores were nonsignificant for Whites, males, females, and the total group. For Black preschoolers, Form L was apparently more difficult to complete successfully than Form M. (Author)

The paper's primary purpose is to outline an experimental logic that (1) considers causally prior skills such as nonverbal IQ, vocabulary, and decoding, and (2) emphasizes the relative importance of component reading skills rather than simple differences between groups of good and poor readers. (Author/DB)