Diane E. Beals

Explanatory Talk in Low-Income Families' Mealtime Conversations.

The purpose of this article is to outline the types and frequency of explanatory talk that occur in naturalistic conversations of low-income families of preschoolers. Thirty-one families participated in the study, tape-recording family mealtimes when their children were 3, 4, and 5 years old. A total of 75 transcripts were collected and analyzed for the presence of nine categories of explanatory talk, including intentional, causal, evidential, definitional/descriptive, procedural, and consequential. Explanatory talk consisted of conversation concerning some connection between objects, events, concepts, and/or conclusions that one speaker is pointing out to another. The most frequent type of explanations fell into intentional categories, which accounted for more than half of all segments of explanatory talk.

Family Talk: Sources of Support for the Development of Decontextualized Language Skills.

This article reports the findings regarding the home language environments of the children in the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development. Home visits were made to collect interview data about family practices and to tape record specific types of talk between child and mother including a book reading, a toy play, and an elicited report. A mealtime conversation was also recorded by the family after the visit without the experimenter present. This article discusses the results of the analyses of these tasks reporting the central tendencies of the measures and particular styles of interaction between mother and child within tasks and across tasks. Developmental changes that occur in these dyads are also examined. The home environments of three selected children are profiled as well.

Appropriating others' words: Traces of literature and peer culture in a third-grader's writing

Mikhail Bakhtins notion of appropriation is a potentially powerful way to conceptualize discourse development in children. Typically, studies of discourse development have emphasized structural aspects of text. However, children appropriate not only forms, but also words, themes, purposes, and styles. From a developmental point of view, the concept of appropriation raises at least three questions: What is it that children appropriate? Where do they get their material? And what do they do with that material? In an attempt to make sense of appropriation as a developmental construct, we examine one third-graders writing: Suzannes book, The missing piece . We find that Suzanne appropriated material from two major sources: (a) adult-authored text – Margaret Sidneys novel, Five little Peppers and how they grew – and (b) the meanings and values of a stratified local peer culture. We conclude by discussing the significance of this work for future research on childrens discourse development. (Discourse development, Mikhail Bakhtin, peer culture, social context of writing, childrens writing, appropriation)

A Practical Guide for Estimating Readability

I n recent years, educators have become increasingly concerned with the readability of instructional materials. Readability is a quality attributed to printed matter that is usually expressed by the minimum academic functioning level that is required in order to comprehend the text. Special education teachers, who have students of varying abilities, are asking, Are my students able to read and understand their textbooks? What kinds of materials can I require the

Reasoning and Explanatory Talk: Learning in Everyday Settings

There are two approaches to children’s explanation: The first is philosophical and links scientific explanation with children’s reasoning. The second is sociocultural – focusing on the interaction between children and more knowledgeable others that allows the child to participate in the language of reasoning. Although the two approaches have distinct research and theoretical literatures, each perspective benefits the other by linking what a child learns and knows to what linguistic, social, and cultural contexts the child is exposed to and participates in. The first approach focuses on the child’s cognition, while the second focuses on child’s verbal interaction with others.

Children's language: Developing narrative and discourse competence (Vol. 10). Keith E. Nelson, Ayhan Aksu-Koc, and Carolyn E. Johnson. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2001. Pp. 163.

The highly regarded Childrens Language series continues in 2001 with two new volumes, 10 and 11 (Nelson, Aksu-Koc, & Johnson, 2001, Vol. 11). Under the able leadership of Keith Nelson (who has edited all but two volumes), each volume since 1978 has represented current topics in research on child language; and the series provides a comprehensive overview of the history and progression of the study of language development over the past two and a half decades. Since Volume 7, the papers included in the series were chosen from the range of presentations at the meetings of the International Association of the Study of Child Language, which bring together researchers from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, North and South America, and Africa. Prior to Volume 7, articles in each volume also represented an international scope.