This study has five chapters, organized in the following manner: (1) Chapter I contains the introduction, statement of the problem, purpose of the study, questions, significance of the study, and definition of terms; (2) Chapter II is a review of the literature; (3) Chapter III is a description of subjects and tests and procedures for treating the data; (4) Chapter IV contains the statistical technique of the analysis and the findings related to the questions, and (5) Chapter V consists of the summary, findings, conclusions, and recommendations. The problem of the study was to explore the relationship between curiosity and print awareness among four-year-old children. Subjects participating in the study were 71 four-year-old children from six licensed child care and preschool settings located in different geographical sections of a north central Texas city. The study included thirty-four girls and thirty-seven boys. Instruments used to collect the data were Kreitler, Zigler, and Kreitler's battery of curiosity tasks and Goodman's Signs of the Environment and Book Handling Knowledge tasks. Canonical I correlation analyses do not yield a significant relationship between variables of curiosity and print awareness. An alternate Pearson Product Moment correlation yielded some specific pairwise correlations between certain curiosity variables and …

For this study an attempt was made to bridge the disciplines of linguistics and composition in order to examine factors contributing to textual coherence. Pairs of descriptive texts written by fifty college students were examined in order to identify the factors which differentiate quality and topic. Students were asked to compose a descriptive paragraph on the topic of fall. They were then encouraged to use their five senses, given leaves, and asked to compose a paragraph describing the leaves. The pairs of texts thus elicited were evaluated for preference by readers. The ANOVA revealed a significant difference (p=.001) between the two topics with fall texts preferred over the more specific leaves texts. Results suggest that encouraging students to use their five senses does not improve their writing. It may be more important to move through various levels of abstraction than to merely focus on sensory detail. The texts were also scored holistically by two trained evaluators. Results of this grading were used to choose five high- and five low-coherence texts on each of the two topics. These 20 texts were then analyzed in terms of the tagmemic referential hierarchy. A MANOVA was done to examine the dependent variables of Slot …

Metalinguistic sentience refers to the conscious or unconscious apprehension of, sensitivity to, and attention to language as something with form and function that can be manipulated. This includes, but is not restricted to, conscious or unconscious apprehension of, sensitivity to, and attention to the following aspects of language and literacy: pragmatics, syntactics, semantics, phonology, orthography, morphology, figurative, metalanguage, print "carries" meaning, print conventions, book conventions, text conventions, referent/label arbitrariness, purposes of literacy, and abilities. These aspects of language and literacy are part of a morphological model developed by the author for classifying the evidence provided by children of their metalinguistic sentience. The two other faces of the model, displayed as a cube, depict (1) Literacy Acguisition and Literacy Learning and (2) four Prompt States: Self-, Child-, Adult-, Text. This ethnographic study of nine verbally gifted kindergarten and first grade children was conducted with a three-fold purpose: to explore whether young verbally gifted children's metalinguistic sentience coincided with their cognitive ability, to explore whether young verbally gifted children's metalinguistic sentience influenced their literacy acquisition and literacy learning, and to explore whether young verbally gifted children's literacy acquisition and literacy learning enhanced their metalinguistic sentience. The study took place during a full …

The purpose of this study was to describe the home literacy environments and literacy experiences of a select group of Asian American children, and to recommend an intervention program based on the findings. The target population was the families which sent their children to a Saturday Asian language and culture school while sending them to public schools during the week, because of their expressed interest in literacy and the probability of their being the group to most likely benefit from intervention. The Home Literacy Environment and Literacy Experiences survey was initially sent out and results tallied and quantified. Upon placing the returned surveys into groups of "high," "middle," and "low" home literacy environment and literacy experiences, a sample of five "high" and five "low" families was selected for further study. Home visits, interviews, field notes, collection of artifacts and other methods of data collection provided a clearer picture of the state of the home literacy environment and literacy experiences of the families studied. Families rated as having "high" home literacy environment and experiences were found to have a larger number of literacy-related materials and higher frequency of literacy-related activities. Bilingualism and education were perceived as being important. The families also …

The study investigated the relationship among three cognitive styles and summarization abilities. Both summarization products and processes were examined. Summarizing products were scored and a canonical correlation analysis was performed to determine their relationship with three cognitive styles. Summarizing processes were examined by videotaping students as they provided think aloud protocols. Their processes were recorded on composing style sheets and analyzed qualitatively. Subjects were sixth-grade students in self-contained classes in a suburban school district. Summarizing products were collected over a two week period in the fall. Summarizing processes were collected over an eight week period in the spring of the same school year. The results of the summarizing products analysis suggest that cognitive styles are related to summarization abilities. Two canonical correlations among the two variable sets were statistically significant at the .05 level of significance (.33 and .29). The results further suggest that students who are field independent, reflective, and flexible in their attentional style may be more adept at organizing their ideas and using written mechanics while summarizing. Students who are impulsive and constricted in attentional style may exhibit strength in expressing their ideas while summarizing. Results of the summarizing processes analysis suggest that students of one cognitive …