The Mount Gravatt Language Development and Reading Program described in this paper is the result of a conviction that teachers of reading and writing should build on the impressive and highly functional oral language system which children bring to their formal education for literacy. The paper first presents the language research on which the…

This handbook, designed for the language arts teacher, is based on the ideas that content area teachers must be responsible for specialized reading skills within their content areas and that reading instruction should not cease after the first six grades. Specific techniques and activities are suggested for developing the correlation between…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 32 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the development of young children's metalinguistic understanding of "letter,""word," and "sentence"; (2) modifications in speech to elderly conversationalists;…

Student editorials and letters to the editor that appeared in selected school newspapers during two school years (1949-1950 and 1973-1974) were analyzed to determine whether the more recent writing revealed characteristics usually associated with oral expression, a hypothetically negative influence of television viewing. In the analysis, only five…

Suggests that observations of young children's story constructions can be used to help teachers provide appropriate oral language experiences in classroom programs for beginning readers and writers. (SKC)

An examination of the influence of early bilingualism (German and Italian) on personality, social behavior, perception, and linguistic competence of four- to six-year-old Italian preschoolers (N=65) found no significant differences in social behavior, but some differences in terms of self-confidence, self-control, memory, and oral skills. (CB)

Examples of conversational interactions between a native speaker of English and a Japanese person learning English illustrate the need for more culturally sensitive English as a second language teaching, pointing out that language instruction requires attention and sensitivity to not just linguistic factors but also sociolinguistic aspects. (CB)

Errors in the spoken French of immersion students, reflecting a fossilized interlanguage and language transfer, are attributed to an erroneous assumption underlying immersion instruction: that students acquire the second language in the same way they acquire their native language. An improved syllabus aimed at second-language learners is…

Analysis of conversation (focusing on question-answer sequences) in beginning school readers suggests that such books typically convey an image of childhood that combines conversational initiative and conversational competence as a member of the classroom community. (Author/CB)

The phonology/pronunciation course of the Canadian government's advanced language training program emphasizes activities which generate student motivation and optimism in overcoming "fossilized" pronunciation (pronunciation highly resistant to change). Activities include: oral reading, feedback, recording of reading, and self-directed…

Addresses attitudes toward reading resulting in beginning reading instruction in the kindergarten and preschool curriculum. Argues that previously accepted notions of the necessity of reading readiness are no longer viable and encourages home and classroom support for the acquisition of reading abilities through written and oral language. (DST)

Indicates that it is feasible to include selected expressive and receptive language activities (focusing on syntactic-semantic relationships) into reading instruction for primary grade students. (FL)

This study examines whether Spanish-English bilingual children's phonological awareness (PA) performance reflects specific contrasts between English and Spanish by focusing on children's segmentation of vowels treated as single units in English but as two units in Spanish (/eI/ and /aI/). The role of oral language proficiency, specifically…

Papers for the fourth Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) Conference include the following: "Endangered languages and Literacy" (Nicholas Ostler, Blair Rudes); "Keynote Address: On Native Language Literacy: a Personal Perspective" (Ofelia Zepeda); "A Community's Solution to Some Literacy Problems: The Mayangna of…

Thirteen years after the first edition of this book, significant changes in social and intellectual life have made the subject of classroom discourse more important than ever, and this new edition integrates current perspectives and research. New features in the book include: a new rationale for the importance of student-teacher talk (the…