This paper presents a number of hypotheses concerned with individual learning strategies based on a pre-experimental, observational case study. Three children (two seven-year-olds and one eleven-year-old) native speakers of Hebrew were the subjects of the study. The language data collected from them consisted of spontaneous speech about their…

A study was conducted to describe the ability of students to handle the various systems of the English language (phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics) and to determine how these systems are being affected by the linguistic environments surrounding the students. The 210 student subjects were enrolled in seven of the schools of the Lake and…

A longitudinal study of English acquisition by a Vietnamese mother and her daughter is reported. Subjects of this study are Lan, a young Vietnamese woman in her late twenties, and her daughter Than, who was four years old at the time this study began. Neither knew any English when they resettled in Texas in the summer of 1975 after fleeing from…

A cross-cultural study of British and United States elementary school children's writing and reading, looking in particular at the comparative growth of syntactic maturity in the two countries as the key to both processes and the link between them, is described in this report. Five hundred sixteen children in 19 classrooms in the Nottingham area…

This paper about the history and distribution of indigenous languages of Bolivia is divided into two parts. The first part deals with: (1) the developments of comparative work in South American Indian languages, (2) the phonological problems of comparative work in recently written languages, and (3) the apparent conflicts when dealing with early…

The need for an index of development by which second language proficiency could be expediently and reliably guaged has been acknowledged by both second language (L2) teachers and researchers. In two previous L2 studies, the search for an index of development centered on an examination of learner written performance. In an attempt to construct an…

The English speech of an adult native Polish speaker learning English as a second language was analyzed for the acquisition of the English negation system. The types of errors made appeared to be developmental rather than language transfer errors. There was little trouble with single negation in English which contrasts with multiple negation in…

Play sessions of two Mexican children (one five and one eight years old) with English-speaking friends were recorded and the use of language play was examined. Language play is viewed as a non-literal, rule-bound use of language that children engage in for its own sake, either cooperatively or competitively. Practice opportunities and children's…

Compositions written by 48 university students of English as a Second Language (ESL) were examined as a step in the development of an index for proficiency in a second language. A feature analysis of the compositions revealed the following tendencies: (1) syntactic sophistication and tense usage improved as proficiency increased, (2) errors in…

SPEAKING AN ORAL LANGUAGE AND SPEAKING A WRITTEN LANGUAGE INVOLVE DIFFERENT PATTERNS OF LANGUAGE USE WHICH ARE IN TURN RELATED TO DIFFERENT EDUCATIONAL METHODS AND DIFFERENT COURSES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT. BECAUSE ORAL SPEECH RELIES ON CONTEXT FOR COMMUNICATION, A COMMON CONTEXT AND POINT OF VIEW IS ASSUMED BY THE SPEAKER TO EXIST BETWEEN THE…

THE TEACHING OF THE NATIVE LANGUAGE CAN BE DIVIDED INTO THREE MAJOR MODES--THE PRESCRIPTIVE, THE DESCRIPTIVE, AND THE PRODUCTIVE. PRESCRIPTIVE TEACHING PROCEEDS FROM TWO (SUSPECT) ASSUMPTIONS--(1) THAT THERE ARE ABSOLUTE STANDARDS UNANIMOUSLY KNOWN AND SHARED BY EDUCATED ADULTS, TO WHICH A STUDENT'S LANGUAGE SHOULD ATTAIN, AND (2) THAT…

RESEARCH HAS NOT YET YIELDED CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE TO PROVE THE SUPERIORITY OF THE AUDIOLINGUAL APPROACH TO LANGUAGE TEACHING OVER THE TRADITIONAL, GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION METHOD. COLLABORATION ON EXPERIMENTATION BY TRAINED PSYCHOLOGISTS AND LANGUAGE TEACHERS COULD YIELD THE RELIABLE AND USEFUL DATA NEEDED TO MAKE RATIONAL DECISIONS ABOUT IMPROVING…

THE LITERATURE ON LANGUAGE ABILITY AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO ACADEMIC SUCCESS INCREASINGLY VOICES ALARM THAT THE CULTURALLY DISADVANTAGED ARE SERIOUSLY DEFICIENT IN LANGUAGE ABILITY. INTERVENTION PROGRAMS CREATED TO CORRECT THIS PROBLEM ALL RECOGNIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE TOOLS FOR INTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONING. ESSENTIAL TO SUCH PROGRAMS, AND…

The materials presented here describe the Latin American naming system, explain how it differs from the North American system, and indicate how contrasting features of the two systems can be a barrier to communication between the two peoples. Major concepts considered are (1) the American full name versus the "nombre completo," (2) the…

The works cited on this extensively annotated bibliography represent approaches for understanding the language development of disadvantaged children. The subjects covered are bilingualism and dialectology, developmental influences (ethnic, family and home, instructional, and social and economic) and developmental status and processes (behavioral,…