This study examines through Conversation Analysis (CA) the way requests for action are interactionally accomplished in naturally occurring spontaneous conversation, and uses the findings as the basis for an evaluation of the way requests are presented in published English language teaching (ELT) materials. The following areas are discussed: (1)…

Kindergarten and first-grade children participated in a study of the role of reciprocal and inversion reversibility in language acquisition and cognitive development. Subjects completed cognitive tasks assessing conservation, seriation, and class inclusion, and language tasks assessing the active-passive transformation and the negative…

Children, four, six, eight, and twelve years old, and adults participated in a study of judgments of syllable similarity. Subjects listened to a disyllabic nonsense unit (the standard) followed by two comparison stimuli; they were then asked to choose the comparison stimulus "most like" the standard. Changes between the comparison stimuli and the…

The purpose of this study was to analyze differences in children's written questions by means of the theoretical model of transformational-Generative grammar. Eight questions written by children in grades 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 comprised the nucleus of this study. The eight questions were chosen from a larger group of questions and separated into…

This study presents a dramatistic analysis of the language used by four teachers, all of whom were considered excellent by their department directors, by their students, and by the parents of their students. Regular freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior literature classes were videotaped. Dialogue was then transcribed, and nonverbal activity,…

A study examined the type of Wh question (those introduced by who, what, when, where, why, or how) and the phrase structure rules required for the verb phrase to determine how they relate to the acquisition and development of the Wh question transformation. Children ranging in age from 2 to 6 years were given three tasks, each containing 36…

This study was designed to examine how the form class and position of a word in a sentence influence the ability of primary-grade students to use available context to correctly guess an unknown word. Forty-three second-grade-level readers were asked to read orally four cloze passages that had been constructed from first-grade-level, basal reading…

Sociolinguistic attitudes of 160 high school students, 160 parents or other adults, and 40 high school teachers were studied through questionnaires administered in four South Carolina schools. Results indicated that a majority of students and teachers felt that dialect differences interfere with communication in the classroom, but that eradication…

This study investigated the interrelationship of articulation and receptive and expressive language performance by 306 children in kindergarten and first and second grade in Fort Collins, Colorado, with regard to age, sex, and socioeconomic level. Fifty-one males and 51 females from the sample group were tested on three pairs of tests: the Arizona…

A descriptive research technique was applied in this study, which sought to determine the linguistic emphasis in the teaching of English grammar in the elementary schools of Texas. A questionnaire, which asked for information on the background and experience of the teachers, as well as for information on English grammar instruction in their…

This study compared the vocabulary of the period from 1943 to 1945 to the vocabulary of 1975. In addition to a direct comparison of word use, an indirect comparison was made using Thorndike's word list in the "Teacher's Word Book" (1931). The 1975 vocabulary, based on frequency of word appearance, was derived from 93 speeches made by students in…

Predictors of relative clause production in adult second language acquisition were examined through a replication and extension of a study by Schachter (1974). The present study is different in that it was based on oral instead of written production and it was designed to examine avoidance with the consideration that avoidance presupposed choice.…

A study was conducted to examine plain language legislation in the 50 states and to evaluate the progress made in simplifying government regulations as a result of President Carter's executive order mandating the use of clear language in regulations. In the first part of the study, laws and bills relating to plain language in consumer contracts…

This master's thesis examines the utility of Edward Fry's 23 syllabication generalizations. To validate these rules, two sets of one thousand words each were selected, one set containing "easy" words taken from the Word Frequency Book, the second set containing "hard" words taken randomly from the Thorndike Barnhart Advanced…

A sample of 180 students in fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh grades participated in a study of the effect of age on the precision of interpretation of metaphorical language. All students read at or above fourth grade level. Metaphorical-language interpretation ability was measured by a 38-item instrument developed by the investigator using…