Reports research which shows that a wide gap exists between basal reader language and children's level of oral language development. (JM)

Compares semantic uses of mental state words by children four and a half to five years old. Suggests that children's linguistic and cognitive capacities can be influenced a great deal by subtle situational factors and that the effects vary according to the child's cultural background. (AEW)

Analysis of two- to five-year-olds' (N=26) responses to queries regarding utterances they made during free play indicated that social context interacted with response type, demonstrating that the initial utterance had a role in response determination and was important to the contingent query sequence. (Author/CB)

Investigation of two- to four-year-olds' (N=20) understanding of temporal terms indicated that children were more likely to understand sentences using simple tasks, materials, and commands than more complicated sentences used in previous research. (Author/CB)

Addresses two questions: (1) When do children who are bilingual from birth become aware that they speak two languages? and (2) What are the factors that lead to this awareness? The subjects in the study described here were Italian/German bilingual children living in the Italian region of Alto Adige. (CFM)

Investigates the relationship between bilingualism and metalinguistic awareness in Puerto Rican Spanish- and English-speaking children. Findings indicate that native language proficiency, as well as the degree of bilingualism, affect metalinguistic awareness, and that these effects interacted with the types of items in the metalinguistic tasks.…

A study exploring the relationship between language-related attitudes of English-speaking immigrants in Israel and their choice of their native language or Hebrew for communication with their Israeli-born children showed that lack of proficiency in Hebrew just as often encouraged parents to choose that language as their child's native language.…

Videotapes of four mother-child dyads and diaries kept by the mothers, showed that there was a strong relationship between the children's initial use of words and the most frequently occurring use of these words by the mothers. It was also found that, although the majority of children's first words were context-bound, a significant number were…

A modeling experiment, conducted to determine if children benefit from observing speech not addressed to them in discovering the use of first and second pronouns, suggested that children even less than two years of age can attend to and learn from speech not addressed to them. (Author/CB)

Reviews recent studies concerning the acquisition of gender systems of different languages and the development of the mass/count distinction in English, focusing on evaluation of the early formal learning approach. (CB)

Reveals that young children acquiring Mandarin Chinese differentiate subject from topic, even though Chinese is a "topic-prominent" language. Data are based on results of a standardized, elicited imitation test of 95 Chinese children in Taiwan. Subjects between 2 years, 6 months and 5 years of age responded to coordinate as well as…

Sets out general guidelines for diagnosing students' strengths and integrating the student into the class. Presents four principles of language development and shows how they translate into practice. (JK)

Analysis of videotapes recorded of three preverbal infants' communication attempts with their mothers revealed three behaviors: Negotiations occurred when mothers helped infants make their intents clear; Immediate Successes occurred when mothers readily comprehended the infants' intents; and Missed Attempts occurred when the mother failed to…

Describes two types of feedback (explicit and implicit) in the responses of four mothers to their two-year-old children and investigates whether these mothers respond differentiallly to their children's well-formed and ill-formed utterances with either type of feedback. Results demonstrate that a high proportion of maternal responses qualify as…

Claims that the term "process writing" is used indiscriminately to describe both the naturalistic approach to learning how to write and the process of selecting a topic, drafting, conferencing, and publishing. Suggests that writing to publish should not be the only writing children do. (SRT)