Story retelling is suggested as a method to evaluate children's ability to comprehend, organize, and express language. (MKM)

Five language-eliciting situations were presented to kindergarten and primary-grade children to identify developmental trends and task effects in the complexity of language structures, vocabulary, functions, and story conventions used. Limited developmental differences and significant task effects were found. Implications for classroom instruction…

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)

Examines speech samples of a boy 2;4 to 2;11 to determine the relationship between speech disturbances and language production process development. Disfluencies were randomly distributed during the first half of the observation period, then concentrated in function words and sentence initial words, reflecting an emerging speech component dedicated…

Vowel production of a 14-month-old girl was studied over a 6-month period. Sixty percent of the vowels were produced correctly. A complex pattern of vowel preferences and errors was partially related to prespeech babbling preferences and strongly related to word structure variables (monosyllabic versus disyllabic). (Author/JDD)

Analyzes preschool class circle time from an ethnographic perspective. Findings suggest that rules, guidelines, expectations, and roles in the event change over time. (RJC)

Developmental changes in the expression of contrast in child discourse were investigated. Contrast is defined as a psychological phenomenon and applied to the domain of discourse topics. The development of the ability to produce utterances that are topically related to the previous conversational turn is considered. Four types and three levels of…

Describes the transition from single to multiple word utterances in one child. The development illustrates the initial dissociation and later coordination of the temporal chaining of elements and meaning relatedness between elements and also the importance of repetition for the change from single-word utterances to meaning-related, multiword…

Examination of a two-year-old's early determiner-noun combinations suggested that early article use can be distributed across a variety of nouns, and that such usage does not seem appropriately characterized as a pattern of limited semantic scope. (CB)

A 20-minute videotape sample was obtained of the language interactions between 20 Down syndrome children (ages 38 to 107 months) and their mothers during informal playtime. Linguistic utterances of mothers and children were coded according to the following language categories: query, declarative, imperative, performative, feedback, imitation,…

Discourse and conversational analysis methods were used in a qualitative reconstruction of one aspect of the regularities in the way 61 children "do" personal reference. Of particular interest was the development of two reference forms: minimization--preference for simple (one word) forms, or recipient design--reference forms indicating…

The study reports quasilongitudinal data on 10 children at 2:0 and 2:5, and another 10 children at 2:9 and 3:3. The analysis included word-initial and word-final phonetic inventories of consonant singletons and clusters and a summary of the relative frequency of seven word shapes. (Author/JDD)

Examines elementary school-aged children's knowledge of directives. Presents findings of cross-sectional research which contrasted first-, third-, and fifth-grade students' comprehension, production of, and reasoning about directives varying in degree of explicitness. Indicates that children's knowledge of directives continues to develop during…

Presents four articles in the context of workshop discussions on characteristics of environments that promote language development: (1) "Children's Conversations: Why are They Important?"; (2) "Ways of Talking: Respecting Differences"; (3) Paul's Talk: Teachers and Parents Look at a Child's Language"; and (4) "In the…

Noting that young children learn to talk at different ages but within certain developmental boundaries, this document presents two charts to help parents facilitate their toddler's speech. The first chart lists characteristics to look for in a growing, healthy baby at various ages between 3 months and 24 months, and suggestions for when to talk to…