The prerequisites of language acquisition are cognitive and pragmatic. The child's conceptual development and social needs direct his attention to particular linguistic forms. These provide an efficient selection device enabling the child to match his language learning task with his abilities. The second language learner who is cognitively and…

This report, designed especially for use by researchers, evaluators, and teachers, explores the practical implications of the composing process for writing instruction and assessment. An understanding of the actual process of text composition is presented as insights into how the acquisition of aspects of writing might be facilitated are explored.…

The normal sequence of development of Spanish phonology and Spanish grammatical patterns in the speech of native Spanish-speaking children, two to five years old, was studied to determine the syntactic structures and range of language variability at each chronological age level. Middle-class children, living in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of…

This study of code switching among Puerto Rican children attending a New York City public school focuses primarily upon the correlation between interaction rules, as perceived by the participants, and code switching. Code switching strategies of a seven-year-old boy, an eight-year-old girl, and a 10-year-old girl in the bilingual third grade class…

This publication is designed to give classroom teachers and reading specialists at all levels 42 ready-to-use informal diagnostic devices for the early and accurate identification of individual and group reading needs. It is organized into eight sections. The first contains suggestions to aid teachers in using various testing devices. The…

A detailed study is reported of the linguistic adaptation of a white girl in a predominantly black school in Camden, New Jersey. The girl is a cultural heroine in the area, having earned the admiration of both blacks, and Puerto Ricans by her ability in fighting, dancing, talking, and dealing with the opposite sex. Subjective reaction tests show…

This paper examines certain of the cues to surface constituency that are salient to children in the comprehension of syntactic structure. Accessibility is studied through a set of experiments requiring seven-year-old children to repeat certain syntactic constituents. These children can correctly identify subjects and also predicate phrases with…

The emphasis of the Schools Council Research and Development Project at the University of Wales on teaching English to Welsh pupils aged 8-13 was on curriculum development. This paper covers the problem of acquiring the necessary basic knowledge about the needs of Welsh first language pupils in the learning of English when long-term, rigorous…

Infant bilingualism can be defined as a child being exposed to two or more languages from birth. Because of the dearth of first-hand research on the effect of a bilingual environment on a child's speaking patterns, parents from multilingual backgrounds raised their daughter in a bilingual environment, German and Spanish, in England. They speak to…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 14 titles deal with the following topics: the composing processes of four twelfth-grade students; the relationship of writing quality to syntax; the development of language variables in two modes of writing and their relationship…

This study explored the dichotomy between global errors, that is, those violating rules of overall sentence structure, and local errors, that is, those violating rules within a particular constituent of a sentence, and the relationship of these to communication breakdown. The focus was tense continuity across clauses (TC) and subject-verb…

TRUE FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY CAN BE ACHIEVED ONLY BY THE INTERNALIZATION OF THE ENTIRE GRAMMAR OF THE TARGET LANGUAGE PLUS THE DEVELOPMENT OF SKILL IN SEMANTIC INTERPRETATION. ADHERENCE TO EITHER OF THE METHODOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS THAT UNDERLIE TODAY'S AUDIOLINGUALLY-ORIENTED PROGRAMS WILL LEAD STUDENTS TO NOTHING MORE THAN A LEARNING PLATEAU.…

DESIGNED AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION FOR PROFESSIONALS PREPARING INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS, PLANNING COURSES, OR DEVELOPING CLASSROOM TECHNIQUES FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROGRAMS, A SERIES OF STUDIES HAS BEEN PREPARED THAT CONTRASTS, IN TWO VOLUMES FOR EACH OF THE FIVE MOST COMMONLY TAUGHT FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN THE UNITED STATES, THE SOUND AND GRAMMATICAL…

THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY WAS TO COMPARE SENTENCE-COMBINING TECHNIQUES OF PUPILS USING THE INITIAL TEACHING ALPHABET (I.T.A.) WITH THE TECHNIQUES OF PUPILS USING TRADITIONAL ORTHOGRAPHY (T.O.). THE INVESTIGATION CONSIDERED--(1) WHETHER I.T.A. PROVIDES A LINGUISTIC ADVANTAGE IN THE WAY PUPILS ADD GRAMMATICALLY TO THEIR SENTENCES, (2) WHETHER THERE…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 13 titles deal with the following topics: the North American Indian in theatre and drama, the lyrical novel, factors affecting the appreciation of suspenseful dramatic presentations, syntactic analysis and the performance of…