Effects of instructional level, teacher's knowledge of children's ability, amount of teacher-initiated activity, and age on language ability were investigated. The subjects were 597 three- to six-and-a-half- year old Head Start children--40 percent White, 38 percent Black, and 20 percent Hispanic. All variables assessed had a direct effect on…

Explores the problems of international teaching assistants (ITA) in graduate education programs, stemming mostly from cultural, language, and educational philosophy differences. A case study of one university's attempts to investigate problems connected with ITA training identifies objectives for selection, admission, training, and retention of…

Reports on two studies designed to prove three hypotheses: (1) five-year-olds can successfully learn a second language (L2); (2) early L2 learning has a positive effect on the development of children's cognitive and first language linguistic abilities; and (3) early L2 learning assists socio-economically disadvantaged children in overcoming…

Questions the plausibility of the unitary competence hypothesis, which assumes a universal structure of second language competence. New evidence, showing divergent structures in language ability subgroups and different influences of teaching styles on different language components, better supports a multidimensional model of foreign language…

Reviews second-language teaching methods and classroom practices in Arab countries as well as the general proficiency of secondary school leavers. The article proposes a teaching method in which the learning activities play a key role. Results of the implementation of this method are discussed. (18 references) (Author/CK)

Overviews differences regarding goals and approaches for foreign language (FL) education and identifies obstacles to consensus. The author situates the different discourse communities interested in FL education, and the contexts providing the "raison d'etre" for these differences. Two responses to this overview and the author's reaction to them…

Conversational and narrative language samples were elicited from 16 school-age individuals with mental retardation and 16 typically developing children matched for mental age. Analysis demonstrated that both groups produced more syntactically complex language during narration, whereas they were more talkative during conversation. Results support…

Investigates the effectiveness of two types of computer feedback: one is traditional computer feedback that indicates only missing or unexpected words in the learner's response, and the other is intelligent computer feedback that provides further information about the nature of the errors in the form of metalinguistic rules. (17 references)…

Reports on an experiment in electronic mail and computer-assisted classroom discussion among 41 college-level French students. Describes the research design and the results as they relate to students' attitudes and motivation. Finds that local area networks seem to encourage discussion among students. (CFR)

Infants' visual recognition memory (VRM) at seven months was associated with their general intelligence, language proficiency, reading and quantitative skills, and perceptual organization at six years. Infants' VRM, object permanence, and cross-modal transfer of perceptions at one year were related to their IQ and several outcomes at six years.…

This study examined linguistic interdependence in 98 bilingual Turkish/Dutch children of Turkish background living in the Netherlands since birth, to determine whether language and literacy skills can be transferred from 1 language. The results indicated that, although the transference of lexicon and syntax skills was limited, pragmatic,…

Discusses a nationwide study of language shift among language-minority children in the United States. Immigrant and American Indian families were surveyed to determine the effects of children's learning of English in preschool on their family language patterns. Findings suggest that primary language loss can be very costly to the children, their…

Among 187 Arizona Mexican-American children with limited proficiency in both Spanish and English, participation in a maintenance bilingual education program during grades K-2 produced significant gains in oral language acquisition for both languages. Students with the lowest proficiency scores in kindergarten showed the greatest gains. (SV)

Experiences of a bilingual multicultural elementary school in Milwaukee (Wisconsin) illustrate how concepts of social justice, equality, and respect for ethnic differences can be introduced. The school is distinguished by its two-way bilingual program that gives every child a chance to master English and Spanish. (SLD)

Six experiments with 42 kindergartners, 190 first graders, and 15 second graders in Germany investigated why arithmetic word problems with an unknown reference set are more difficult for children than are problems with an unknown compare set. Lack of access to flexible language use makes these problems so difficult. (SLD)