Conversations of British 7-year olds and Canadian 11-year olds were analyzed to establish 3 criteria for assessing oracy in classroom situations: ideation (quality of information and its validation); interpersonal (sensitivity of relationships with listeners); and textual (choice and organization of words). Differences between the two groups point…

Investigates and compares the real-time language-processing abilities of language-impaired and normal children using a work recognition reaction time paradigm. Results showed that the language-impaired children used linguistic context to facilitate work recognition but were slower to do so than their normally developing peers. (38 references) (GLR)

Explores the development in children of dual-level phonological processing. The study suggests that even language-delayed six year olds form underlying representations composed of morphophonemic segments. Differences in performance between the groups studied (first graders, young adults, language-delayed first graders) are discussed. (55…

The type of relatively rapid speech modification sometimes called "accommodation" was examined by tracking change on the part of speakers of Honduran Spanish newly resident among speakers of Northern Mexican Spanish. Final /n/ velarization and spirantization both changed toward local norms, but local contact resulted in greater change…

Reviews psycholinguistic research on second-language (L2) self-repair to date with particular attention to the relevance of this field for L2 production and acquisition. (Author/VWL)

Explored the effects of inherent task structure and processing load on narrative retelling task performance, analyzing task performance in terms of competition among fluency, complexity, and accuracy. Research with young adults found that degree of inherent task structure more strongly affected fluency of performance. Processing load influenced…

Examines oral-questionnaire data to assess the tenability of the hypothesis that Africa's language-endangerment situation is characterized by replacement of minority vernaculars with indigenous majority languages. Questionnaire items attended to evaluation accorded minority vernacular as well as language choice in home and non-home settings.…

To determine whether written spelling is superior to oral spelling for children in kindergarten through Grade 2, this study compared children's ability to spell real words and nonsense words orally and in writing. By first and second grade, written spellings were superior to oral spellings in both overall quality and representation of phonological…

Discusses the simplification of forms ending in obstruents by native speakers of Mandarin, in particular two effects that are not obviously motivated by either the native- or the target-language grammars: a tendency to devoice final voiced obstruents and a tendency to maximize the number of bisyllabic forms in the output. (Author/JL)

Examines nonnative-nonnative speaker interaction in English among novice-level Japanese native speakers, focusing on the ability to manage the kind of precision timing found in the turn-taking practices of native speakers. Emphasis is on the interactional competence of low-level nonnative speakers in an ability that is fundamental to the conduct…

Analyzes Spanish lexical data recorded in sociolinguistic interviews with Hispanic community members in Northwest Indiana. Examined how prevalent English is in the spoken Spanish of this community; what variety of Spanish is regarded prestigious; whether lexical forms establish the prestige dialect adopted by speakers of other dialects; the…

Explores the predictors of early mastery versus error in children's acquisition of American Sign Language. Hypothesizes that the most frequent values for a particular parameter in prelinguistic gesture will be the most frequent in early signs and the most likely sources of substitution when children make errors. (Author/VWL)

Written and spoken language samples for 13 students with hearing impairments (HI) attending special classes in Tel Aviv, Israel, and 9 normal hearing students were analyzed for grammatical deviations. HI students exhibited significantly more deviations in written than spoken language samples, especially failure to supply morphological markers,…

Investigates the use of pedagogically directed conversational shadowing, the partial to complete repetition by listeners of a speaker's utterances. Looks at conversational shadowing through transcripts between two Japanese learners of English talking with two English native speakers in mixed dyads in which they were instructed to shadow each…

Examines four different levels of development constituting writing as a technology for thinking. Discusses evolution (what speech affords thinkers), history (how text changed the collective construction of knowledge), ontogeny (how literacy affects the development of mind), and microgenesis (how writing facilitates thinking from moment to moment).…