Four scales developed by Marion Monroe for recording, describing, analyzing, and rating children's oral language skills are described and presented in this paper. The skills assessed by the scales are first described as follows: (1) how a child thinks, as revealed by the quality of ideas; (2) how a child thinks, as revealed by definition of words;…

This paper reports the results of a preliminary study dealing with the ways in which children between ages 6 and 7 organize spoken language. In particular, aspects of the temporal and segmental structure of polysyllabic English words containing the syllable C/jul/, as in the word "pediculous," are dealt with. This study is based on the assumption…

From the standpoint of transformational grammar, this experimental work evaluates the extent to which children choose or fail to generalize their rules for the placement of the negative particles "not" and "n't." The subjects were eight three- and four-year-olds of middle-class background who had been producing sentences with…

The discussion and activities in this booklet are designed to "tune in" language arts teachers to children's language so that they appreciate and respond properly to student language development. Chapter topics include responding to authentic/inauthentic child language, keeping records of children's spontaneous language and relating the words to…

The crib talk reported here of a 2;2-2;4-year-old boy replicates the phenomenon of crib talk reported in previous studies by other investigators. This study adds a corpus of mother-child interaction (MCI) and tests one aspect of the hypothesis that crib talk may enhance production of linguistic forms at a later date. Transcripts of monologues were…

Reading can be defined as a meaningful interaction with a print setting. Interactive models of reading assume that lower level and higher level processing occurs simultaneously, interacting with each other. The familiarity of the book, the context in which a sign occurs, and the illustrations of a book are all examples of print setting cues that…

This Child Development Associate (CDA) training module is designed to help CDA interns to understand, assess, and foster the development of children's communication skills. Objectives are stipulated, activities for achieving each objective are suggested, and an assessment checklist is provided. A study guide emphasizes (1) the nature and use of…

Smith's 1973 model of articulatory phonological development between the ages of two and four is re-examined in an attempt to develop a model that includes the possibility of both perceptual and articulatory learning. Smith's data, regarding phonological transformations of words after rules established by his infant son's pronunciation of the words…

The evaluation of 'deviant articulation' (that of young children, speech defective persons, aphasics, second-language learners) has usually consisted of two activities: transcription of the speech being evaluated, and comparison of the transcription against some 'standard' set of 'target' sounds. Any transcription is a description of a speaker's…

A study of non-native children's acquisition of communicative competence examined the child's construction of rules of conversation in the second language. The linguistic devices that children use to link up their utterances with those of another speaker, i.e., cohesion-creating devices that create textual unity, were focused upon. Repetition, one…

Observation of child language development is just one way to study how language changes over time. Developmental psycholinguistics shares much common ground with historical linguistics and with studies of languages in contact and the evolution of pidgins and creoles. By studying the way language changes, this paper focuses on clarifying the…

This paper examines research findings about language development and their implications for classroom teaching. It first discusses early analyses of child grammar, which led to descriptions of the telegraphic nature of the speech of very young children and to the classification of child grammar into pivot and open classes. It then points out…

The linguistic abilities demonstrated by second grade students show a high level of competence in the use of syntactic structures and lexicon. This report describes and interprets, in terms of language function, the talking and writing of fifteen Australian children. Transcripts of conversations provide the basis for the linguistic analysis and…

This is a report on an on-going research project sponsored jointly by the Speech and Hearing Clinic of the University of Oregon Medical School and Portland State University. The book contains a brief historical review of the study of speech in normal children in recent years. Then follows a structural description of the language used by each of 25…

In this paper, the structure and the use of language are postulated as socializing agents influencing sex-role learning in three major ways: (1) sex differences occur in language use and parallel sex-role stereotypes; (2) the language that is addressed to children is usually the language of socialization which instructs the child what to do,…