Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a supplemental Spanish language instruction program for children who spoke Spanish as their native language and were attending English-only preschool programs. Specifically, the study evaluated the program's effects on the children's Spanish sentence length in words, subordination…

Purpose: This study was designed to identify types of complex-sentence meanings (i.e., "content") produced in selected elicitation contexts by typically developing children within 3 different age groups. The research was motivated by the need for additional evidence-based assessments and interventions for children with language disorders. Method:…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a conversation intervention including 500 min of linguistically and cognitively complex talk on the expressive vocabulary growth of prekindergarten children. Method: Children (N = 73) were randomly assigned to control or a 10-week experimental intervention condition. Twice…

Purpose: This article describes the development of a measure, called First Mentions (FM), that can be used to evaluate the referring expressions that children use to introduce characters and objects when telling a story. Method: Participants were 377 children ages 4 to 9 years (300 with typical development, 77 with language impairment) who told…

Purpose: This study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of teachers' use of a print-referencing style during whole-class read-alouds with respect to accelerating 4- and 5-year-old children's print-knowledge development. It also examined 8 specific child- and setting-level moderators to determine whether these influenced the relation…

Purpose: This article describes a database that was created in the process of conducting a large-scale epidemiologic study of specific language impairment (SLI). As such, this database will be referred to as the EpiSLI database. Children with SLI have unexpected and unexplained difficulties learning and using spoken language. Although there is no…

Purpose: The frequency with which adults reference print when reading with preschool-age children is associated with growth in children's print knowledge (e.g., L.M. Justice & H.K. Ezell, 2000, 2002). This study examined whether prekindergarten (pre-K) teachers naturally reference print during classroom shared reading and if verbal print…

Purpose: The primary purpose of this article is to provide a closer look at the individualization process whereby early childhood professionals ensure that the individualized learning priorities for each child are appropriately addressed. Method: Early childhood professionals, including speech-language pathologists (SLPs), are working to meet the…

Purpose: This final article covering the topic of the interplay between decoding, comprehension, and content versus structure knowledge describes a set of language initiatives that are focused toward content area learning. Inspired by the work of their colleagues from diverse fields and their own work, the authors offer suggestions to clinicians…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the types of speech errors that are produced by children with speech-sound disorders and the children's phonological awareness skills during their prekindergarten and kindergarten years. Method: Fifty-eight children with speech-sound disorders were assessed during the…

Purpose: This study examined reading performance and morphological awareness development in 2 groups of children with speech impairment who had received differing types of intervention during their preschool years. Method: The children were aged between 7;6 and 9;5 (years;months) at the time of the study. Group 1 (n = 8) had received preschool…

Interviews with 9 Southeast Asian families, 10 children, and 4 Head Start staffers found both families and staff were unaware of differences in their beliefs and values in the area of education, parenting, child learning, and disability, which led to confusion and misunderstanding. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

A study analyzed the narratives of 24 predominately English-speaking Latino children (ages 3-5) enrolled in a federally subsidized preschool. The length of narrative did not differ significantly by age. However, older children produced stories that contained longer sentences, a higher proportion of grammatically acceptable sentences, and more…

Forty-three Puerto Rican mother-child dyads in Head Start programs, grouped according to whether the children had learned Spanish and English from birth (n=28) or Spanish from birth and English in Head Start (n=15) participated in a study of home literacy experiences and emerging English literacy abilities. Results found that literacy development…

A longitudinal study examined the performance of 50 African American children (ages 4-6) from low- and middle- income homes on a reading comprehension test. Preliminary results indicate two measures predicted later reading comprehension for children from low income homes, use of complex syntax and shape matching. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)