Teaching language with pictures By Jane J. Giddan and Norman S. Giddan (review)

BOOK NOTICES 231 darham point out, 'Sound management presupposes that a correct differential diagnosis has been made' (p. 178)—a task ranging from difficult to nearly impossible, depending upon the chüd's language and the resources of the community. As an attempt at consciousness-raising, this is a weU-organized and valuable volume—although MiUer seems to have filled lacunae by writing some chapters himself, not always successfully . Identification of bilingual children with language/learning disabiUties is more important than this bookmakes it seem: in addition to the small proportion of possibly untreated non-native English-speaking chüdren with these disabiUties, there are many chüdren occupying places in remedial classes whose only 'disabUity ' may be Umited exposure to EngUsh. E. Gavil án-Torres' paper is particularly interesting, being focused on the issue of identification for Hispanic chüdren. She also takes great care with her terminology: rather than use the term 'biUnguaT, she refers to 'Umited EngUsh proficiency ' for these chüdren, and concerns herself with differentiating it from language disabiUty. [Marv W. Salus, Dominican College, Blauvelt , NY.] Teaching language with pictures. By Jane J. Giddan and Norman S. Giddan. Springfield, IL: Thomas, 1984. Pp. viii, 221. G&G have not written a classical text for teachers or parents concerning rudimentary language acquisition: rather, their experiences as language therapists have prompted them to present their own devices for pictorial language instruction to the language/speech-impaired child. 1,151 pictures—divided into actions, objects , and events—yielded the design of VCLC (Visually-Cued Language Cards). These cards are designed to be used by the professional cUnician as weU as by parents at home. This strategy goes hand-in-hand with speech therapy such as this reviewer's son (now 6è) has been receiving on a biweekly basis at GlenknoU Elementary School in Yorba Linda, CA, in which parents work on 'homework' (sometimes using cards) with the patients. G&G present four basic principles of childlanguage acquisition, which they hope will become established for the language-disordered (p. 10)—e.g. that the length of an utterance increases developmentaUy. They have devised the pictures to reflect the reaUty of progressively more intricate behavior, which requires progressively longer phrases and sentences. The VCLC also are psychoUnguisticaUy based, in that they are founded on the principle of visual cueing and can be used 'in connection with a diverse set of assessment and teaching approaches , including the buUding of vertical and horizontal syntactic matrices' (15). The model of the VCLC assumes that language learning takes place from motoric, to iconic, to symbolic stages (based on J. Piaget, Six psychological studies, 1968). Ch. 1 claims that, previous to the VCLC, no such pictures were available; however, it must be noted that teachers have always managed, on their own, to collect pictures from a variety of sources (this is true of the ESL teacher as well). The use of pictures is not novel with G&G; however, many of their specific pictures are. Ch. 2 emphasizes the principle that the interpersonal relationship between clinician and child is crucial to the development of successful teaching. This is tantamount to saying what I have discovered over years of trial and error as a linguist who also teaches languages—viz. , no matter what kind of teaching strategy/methodology one uses (ALM, natural approach, grammar -translation), the teacher's personaUty, manner, style, and rapport with students are far more important. Or to use different words, a superb teaching methodology with a bad teacher is doomed to fail. Ch. 3 examines some specific techniques which the language clinician may employ. Starting from a single word (baby, car etc.), the twoelement syntactic structure is introduced (two nouns together, then followed by N + V)—all visually cued; other key constructions follow. The use of red in the pictures for negation, yellow for didl-ed pasts etc. seems particularly useful. I would also like to point out that language games yield the chief success story for our son (but this is standard practice for most clinicians). Ch. 4 is unique in that it offers suggestions for parents. Parents can be helpful to their chüdren in this regard, but clinicians tend not to want to be...