Part of a series of articles entitled "Environment and the Child.

Found that language-disordered children (K-3) who participated in a creative drama program showed an increase both in number of words spoken and in use of the projective language function. Found no significant increase, however, in their use of the directive language function. (PD)

Describes the interrelationship of reading and writing and proposes a full-school program for reading and writing development that builds on the full range of personal use of written language. (JL)

Children's pragmatic abilities were studied focusing on "requesting" in a group of 30 language impaired children (three to nine years old). There was a predominant usage of direct forms with only a slight increase of indirect ones in the older group. (Author/SEW)

Sensitivity to differences in lexical stress was studied in monolingual French-, German-, and Swedish-speaking four- and five-year-olds. For most discriminations the older children performed better, but for a trisyllabic discrimination not found in French, the older children performed less well, supporting an attunement theory of language…

A study investigating a mother's use of discussion of picture books as a language acquisition strategy is reported, and the usefulness of establishing routine items and constructions in such discussion is examined. Use of the situation-specific approach to studying input language is also discussed. (MSE)

Examines children's attraction to rhythm and rhyme of nursery rhymes and how these factors affect literacy. Discusses the connection between rhyme and reading and spelling acquisition. (HTH)

Provides a historical view of child language research, showing that investigations of child language have come full circle in their approach to gathering data. Discusses implications for teachers in encouraging children's progression to adult-like conversation. (HTH)

Presents a method and rationale for enhancing verbal learning in a typical reading-language arts lesson through personal and group generated images and associations. (FL)

Examines the communicative functions served by the lexical usage of normal and language impaired children whose speech was limited to single word utterances. (EKN)

Presents examples of young children using written language. Shows teachers and parents what they can learn from children's developing sense of written language. Suggests activities by which parents and teachers can spur child language development. (RL)

Analyzes the late babbling productions of a French child and compares them with data from similar studies of English and Thai children. Shows that although the French child and his English counterparts share some universal phonetic preferences, a selective, language-specific phonetic acquisition takes place during the babbling stage. (Author/MES)

Analyzes mother and child speech in free play conversation for different semantic and syntactic categories. Based on the study of changes taking place over time in children's use of semantic categories, argues against the hypothesis that the mother's speech is gradually adjusted to the child's performance. (Author/MES)