The quality of the verbal environment sets the stage for young children's developing perceptions of themselves and others. This document provides hands-on, practical advice for practitioners to support children's self-perception and coping skills by establishing and maintaining a positive verbal environment. Positive verbal environments enhance…

Describes various aspects of young children's playful use of language. The kind and characteristics, functions, and teaching implications of language play are discussed. (Author/CM)

Many researchers now believe that the representations and processes underlying syntactical development are specific to a "language faculty." If so, reference animacy would not be expected to influence acquisition of linguistic structures such as the passive sentence construction. Specifically, children should be comparably able to…

Writing is now being viewed in its larger context of communication. Research suggests that young children use the more familiar communication systems like speech, drawing, music, and drama to add depth and meaning to their writing. Teachers must redefine their ideas about writing and children's communication knowledge. Cites six references. (MLH)

Mothers, fathers, teachers, and speech therapists rated improvement in communication skills of 11 young children (ages 3-5) with autism following one year of intensive treatment. Results found fathers, teachers, and speech therapists in significant agreement with a psychometric measure of speech and language, whereas mothers' ratings bore no…

This sequential analysis tested the relative extent to which several adult utterance types elicited conversational replies from eight developmentally delayed children (mean age 53 months). Among findings were that child replies of any length were elicited by adult topic continuations more than by any other adult utterance type. (Author/DB)

Four activities are offered for French second-language classroom use: an exercise to aid comprehension of indicative and subjunctive mood; a lesson in making bread and jam, designed for young children; a study of narration within a novel, using a Guy de Maupassant story; and an exercise in discourse analysis. (MSE)

About and for teachers, this book examines children's language acquisition from the time they are born throughout the years of schooling. It tracks first and second language acquisition from birth through the school years using the experiences of a number of different children to exemplify stages and sequences of development. Chapters in the book…

Techniques to assess the vision, hearing, and speech and language of multihandicapped children are briefly described. Interferences in normal vision functioning and development during infancy can be identified and intervention initiated early in the child's life. Obtaining an in-depth history from the parents is the first step. It is essential…

A study examined the acquisition of negation in English as a Second Language in a 4-year-old Salvadoran girl, a native speaker of Spanish. Specifically, the study looked for evidence of language transfer in bilingual acquisition and the direction of that transfer (Spanish to English, English to Spanish). Over 5 months, spontaneous speech (55…

A discussion of bilingualism and second language learning distinguishes three types of bilingualism, namely, compound, coordinate, and sub-coordinate. A compound bilingual is an individual who learns two languages in the same environment so that he/she acquires one notion with two verbal expressions. A coordinate bilingual acquires the two…

Originally developed as part of a project for the Department of Defense Schools (DoDDS) system, this learning package on language learning and the young child is designed for teachers who wish to upgrade or expand their teaching skills on their own. The package includes an overview of the project; a comprehensive search of the ERIC database; a…