This paper proposes that a metaphor of linguistic levels, similar to that used in general linguistic theory, be applied to the study of levels within an essay. The linguistic conception of levels in a piece of writing is not sentence-paragraph-essay (which might be characterized as a rhetorical division) but rather (or in addition to)…

A study investigated the exophoric function of the pronouns "it, they, he, she" and related forms in four English conversations. It analyzed the frequency and characteristics of the occurrence of those exophoric pronouns and found that they were much less frequent than endophoric pronouns. It also found that the exophoric pronoun groups…

This paper presents the results of a quantitative analysis of the historical present tense (HP) in English. The tokens of HP in narrative clauses, such as "he's smiling, an' he picks up the card," are referentially equivalent to their past tense alternants in the phrases, "he was smiling an' he picked up the card." Previous…

Ways in which the study of discourse analysis can aid the teacher of basic writing in helping their students to express themselves fluently are explored in this paper. It is noted that remedial writers need to learn to relate abstract ideas to concrete examples and that they seem unable to supply the connections between ideas, especially those of…

The focus of this experiment was on the effects of associative strength on retention of connected discourse, in terms of both single words and strings of words. Also of interest was the short- and long-term retention of two types of information, verbatim and substance. Verbatim information covered words and word sequences identical to those in the…

Describes a psycholinguistic investigation of children's competence in the production of extended discourse, concentrating on discourse form (narrative versus expository) and production modality (written versus spoken). (SKC)

Traces the development of predicate use for genre and cohesion in the narratives of children aged two to five, examining predicate structures and types and their linkages via three types of parallelism and by means of explicit connectives. (Author/SED)

Proposes a technique of developing conversational, expressive competence based on a discourse model. Exercises to develop an understanding of commercial negotiation illustrate the technique. (MSE)

The findings indicated that there were no significant differences between good and poor readers in the nature of information recalled or in their use of perceptual connectives. The type of passage, however, did have a significant effect on the number of perceptual connectives given in the recalls. (Author/NQA)

Explores two approaches to discourse structure and comprehension. Illustrates that prior knowledge is ued in conjunction with cues to construct the macrostructure of the story. Provides evidence that text comprehension is based on the presentation of the propositions of the story. (PMJ)

Describes a question-answering procedure for probing the reader's internal representation of prose. Examines two dimensions of a reader's conceptual organization of plot: hierarchical level and relational density of propositions. (PMJ)

Examines comparable speech and writing samples in the British and American components of the International Corpus of English (ICE) to study properties of coordinate structures in English. Findings indicate that "and" is a primary coordinator, that "but" and "or" are more peripheral, and that the concept of…

This paper presents findings from the pattern of participation and discourse analysis of the online interaction among in-service teachers in the teacher training institute in Singapore. It was found that the teachers formed a knowledge-building community and jointly discussed issues related to integrating information technology into the classroom.…

Divided into two phases, a study investigated the differential effects of text with and without logical connectives on college developmental readers' comprehension. In the first phase, 44 sophomores from two sections of a college developmental reading course were administered a cloze comprehension exercise along with a class of 50 regular…