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It is well-established that language skills are amongst the best predictors of educational success. Consistent with this, findings from a population-based longitudinal study of parents and children in the UK indicate that language development at the age of two years predicts children's performance on entering primary school. Moreover, children who enter school with poorly developed speech and language are at high risk of literacy difficulties and educational underachievement is common in such children. Whatever the origin of children's problems with language and communication, the poor educational attainment of children with language learning difficulties is an important concern for educational policy. The research to be reported here addressed the question of whether teacher assessment and monitoring could be used to identify children with language difficulties in need of early interventions. Key findings include: (1) Children with poor language and literacy development at 5 years are at substantial risk of low achievement at 7 years; (2) A revised version of the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile focussing on Communication, Language and Literacy is highly predictive of children's literacy at the end of Key Stage 1; and (3) The research supports the recommendations of the Tickell Review to shorten the EYFSP and for a manageable system of teachers monitoring children's progress over the early years, supported by a valid and reliable tool. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure and 9 footnotes.) [For full report, "Better Communication Research Project: Language and Literacy Attainment of Pupils during Early Years and through KS2--Does Teacher Assessment at Five Provide a Valid Measure of Children's Current and Future Educational Attainments? Research Report. DFE-RR172a," see ED526908.]

Two studies examined six-year-olds' use of analogy in spelling: between visible clue words and similar sounding target words and when clue words are not visible. Both studies found that equal numbers of analogies were made between words sharing a rime unit, a consonant-vowel, or a vowel but were not made when only common letters were shared. (KDFB)

Develops a psychologically plausible model of the development of word-naming skills in children in order to verify psychological evidence indicating the importance of children's underlying phonological skills as determinants of the ease with which they learn to read. This model is highly successful in learning the pronunciations of single-syllable words. (eight references) (CK)

Investigates comprehension problems of children whose decoding skills are normal but whose reading comprehension skills are poor. Concludes that working memory processes are not a major causal factor in the creation of the comprehension difficulties identified in these poor comprehenders. (RS)

Explores the generality of findings relating intelligence to Inspection Time (IT), the exposure necessary to judge which of two lines is longer, in two studies using normal children and mentally retarded adults. Results showed the relationship between IT and performance IQ was lower in the mentally retarded group. (JAC)