This study asked whether exposure to discourse elements affects idea production in novice writers. Different types of prompts were given to 127 high school subjects following the cessation of production. One prompt, termed contentless, was purely motivational; the other, a discourse prompt, conveyed a motivational message as well as information about the discourse structure of the problem/solution text. Subjects given discourse prompts generated significantly more idea units than those given the purely motivational variety. Also, subjects in the discourse-prompting condition spent more time generating ideas. The results held across topic interest and achievement levels, suggesting that instruction in discourse elements may prove beneficial.

This research examines the hypotheses about how print represents the speech that preliterate children select when they receive input compatible with several such hypotheses. In Experiment 1, preschoolers were taught to read hat and hats and book and books. Then, in generalization tests, they were probed for what they had learned about the letter s. All of the children were able to transfer to other plurals (e.g., to decide that bikes said “bikes” rather than “bike,” and that dog said “dog” and not “dogs”), but only those who knew the sound of the letter s prior to the experiment were able to decide, for example, that bus said “bus” and not “bug.” The failure to detect the phonemic value of s on the part of alphabetically naive children was replicated in Experiments 2, 3, and 4, which instituted a variety of controls. In Experiment 5, it was found that, although preschoolers who had been taught to read pairs of words distinguished by the comparative affix er (such as small/smaller) were able to generalize to other comparatives (e.g., mean/meaner), they could not generalize to pairs where er had no morphemic value (e.g., corn/corner). A similar failure by alphabetically naive children to detect the syllabic, as compared with the morphemic, status of the superlative affix est was found in Experiment 6. Overall, the results indicate that most preliterate children fail to select phonologically based hypotheses, even when these are available in the input. Instead, they focus on morphophonology and/or semantic aspects of words' referents. The research is couched in terms of the Learnability Theory (LT) (Gold, 1967), which provides a convenient framework for considering a series of interrelated questions about the acquisition of literacy. In particular, it is argued that if the data available to the child includes the pronunciation of written words, the alphabetic principle may be unlearnable, given the hypothesis selection procedures identified in these experiments.

An important component of the communicative competence of proficient bilinguals is the ability to use each of their languages differentially and appropriately according to relevant characteristics of the interlocutors and communicative situations. The research reported here examined the communicative competence of four young children (average age of 2;2, average MLU of 1·56) who were acquiring English and French simultaneously in the home. We observed the ways these children used their languages with monolingual strangers and with their bilingual parents. Specifically, the children's use of English-only, French-only, and mixed (English and French) utterances with the strangers during naturalistic play situations was compared with patterns of use with their parents, also during play sessions. We found that all of the children made some accommodations that could be linked to the monolingualism of the stranger; some of the children were more accommodating than others. The results are discussed in terms of young bilingual children's ability to modify their language on-line in response to the particular language characteristics of their interlocutors.

The learning of second language vocabulary in lists of word pairs is a widespread practice. A basic practical question in this respect is whether it is more effective for nonfluent bilinguals to learn word pairs in first language–second language order (Ll–L2), or vice versa. To date, experimental psychology has not given a clear answer to this question, partly because it has not addressed the relevant issues directly. This article reviews some aspects of psychology that are relevant to L2 vocabulary list learning and reports on an experiment conducted with comprehensive (high) school students, aged 11–13, who were learning French. The experiment examined the presentation of vocabulary items to be learned. It was found that presenting items in L1–L2 order was the more versatile form of presentation if both production and comprehension of L2 items were required on the part of the learner. The theoretical implications of the findings, relating to the structure of the bilingual lexicon, are also discussed.

Language choice and functional differentiation between Papiamento and Dutch were studied in bilingual parent-child reading sessions in Antillian migrant families; the subjects, who were living in the Netherlands, were to some extent bilingual in Papiamento and Dutch. Mothers were asked to read three picture books to their child: one in Dutch, one in Papiamento, and one without text. Code choice was related to the text and contents of the book, as well as to restrictions imposed by the language proficiency in both languages of the mothers and children. It was expected that Dutch would be used more for more demanding cognitive functions because of its association with school. However, these parents did not categorize rnetalinguistic activity and reasoning as school-related, although they did categorize counting as such and tended to use Dutch to count.

Code-switching between Papiamento and Dutch was studied in bilingual parent–child reading sessions in Antillian migrant families (who were to some extent bilingual in Papiamento and Dutch) in the Netherlands. Mothers were asked to read three picture books to their child: one in Dutch, one in Papiamento, and one without text. The code-switching in the data is studied from three perspectives: its relation to bilingual competence, its structural properties, and the implications for language change through lexical borrowing. Our data confirmed the results of earlier studies, which found that intimate code-switching within the clause is characteristic of fluent bilinguals. In our study, this held in particular for knowledge of Papiamento. Structurally, the type of code-switching encountered was predominantly insertional (with Papiamento as the dominant language), thus conforming to the constraints proposed for this type of switching. The single Dutch words that were frequently inserted into Papiamento utterances by the mothers could easily be interpreted by the child as Papiarnento and are likely to become borrowings in the next generation. We conclude with some remarks about the functions of code-switching in our data.