An interactive/cognitive model can account for the acquisition of a graphophonemic system by young children and be compatible with the cuing explanation, which posits that readers use their graphophonemic knowledge in coordination with their knowledge of language and the world to make sense of print. Explanations in the research literature of how…

A study of children's acquisition of the auxiliary verb system in English is reported. The first section describes the operation of the auxiliary system, and proposes that the behavior of auxiliaries is so complicated that if children were to generalize from one auxiliary to another, they would make predictable errors. The second section reviews…

A 5-year followup study was conducted of Spanish/English bilingual children and their families who had participated in a previous study of early bilingual acquisition when the children were 3 to 4 years old. Language use and interaction patterns by parents, children, and siblings were observed at home. School achievement information and interview…

Designed to reveal children's awareness of print and use of contextual clues and to discover their metalinguistic awareness, language use, and attitudes toward reading and writing, this instrument consists of six tasks. The first three, print awareness tasks, present familiar labels and signs with different degrees of contextuality. The fourth and…

Designed to accompany a slide and tape package, this booklet outlines the role parents can take in children's language development. Following an introduction which familiarizes parents with the concepts of receptive language (comprehension of spoken language) and expressive language (the information a person is trying to communicate and the form…

This article summarizes early work on child language learning and reviews more recent work. It appears that recent research shows that children's linguistic cues, spoken by adults, are slower, less varied and more concrete than adult-adult speech. (Available from North-Holland Publishing Co., P. O. Box 211, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.) (CHK)

This article compares first and second language acquisition and applies conclusions pertaining to first language acquisition to second language learning, specifically that a command of grammar is essential and this grammar is independent of that associated with the written language. (CLK)

Two questions, what is a contrastive grammar, and what is comparable across linguistic systems, are touched on. The problem of the exact relationship of contrastive linguistics to linguistic theory is addressed. Two perhaps mutually exclusive views are discussed. See FL 508 197 for availability. (Author/RM)

Analysis suggests that Korean children use different sentence-ending morphemes to encode different degrees to which they assimilate information into their knowledge system, and that they acquire such epistemic distinctions at a very early age. The study focuses on the occurrence of the modal markers "-ta,""-e," and…

Noting that parents play a key role in assisting their children in learning to talk, this pamphlet helps parents to understand the relationship between hearing, talking, and the process and stages of normal speech and language development. The pamphlet also suggests ways in which parents may encourage their children's listening and talking skills…

This book provides an overview of bilingualism and bilingual education by examining historical and recent literature, presenting firsthand observations, and demonstrating how both popular views and scholarly research actually mirror larger social issues. Following the first chapter, a brief introduction, chapter 2 reviews the historical…

The creation of new words through the novel combination of English words or morphemes (e.g., "map ball" to refer to a globe) was studied and compared in 40 preschool children, 40 grade school children, and 40 adults. These made-up words or lexical innovations were collected while subjects attempted to name pictured objects and were evaluated in…

A study providing a descriptive and explanatory analysis of the representative stages of language acquisition found in a sample of 12 working-class black children ranging from 18 months to 4.6 years is reported. Previous general language research concerned with linguistic abilities of working-class black children is critically evaluated, and the…

This paper provides a brief outline of some of the constituents of speech, language, and universal stages of the development of talking in children up to the age of 2 1/2 years. Mention is made of theories put forward to account for universal aspects of speech and language development; recent research into the way adults talk to very small…

A study designed to examine the variation that occurs in the request production of children between the ages of 6 and 7 observed the kind of requests children make, what they request, whom they ask, and how they formulate their ideas. Twenty native French-speaking children divided into two age groups (6- and 7-year-olds) were asked to complete two…