A study designed to examine the variation that occurs in the request production of children between the ages of 6 and 7 observed the kind of requests children make, what they request, whom they ask, and how they formulate their ideas. Twenty native French-speaking children divided into two age groups (6- and 7-year-olds) were asked to complete two…

This paper looks at how a Brazilian educator implemented Paolo Freire's notion of critical pedagogy. The study describes Brazil's historical background, previous educational conditions, Freire's educational ideas translated into art education, and preservice education. Through participant observation, the study documents the practice of an art…

The focus of this study will be on the intersection of the following domains: Second Language Acquisition research on cohesion and coherence, discourse acquisition of young children, the effect of text form-focused instruction on student non-fiction writing and the impact of schema theory on student decision-making during the writing process.

At the turn of the millennium, the term "spiritual" began to gain more prominence in the educational discourse in Hong Kong, both in official policy documents and in religious schools' descriptions of their own mission. Addressing each of these two cases in turn, a description of the context in which the increased use of the term has…

Connected speech of 134 healthy, Canadian French-speaking adults, grouped according to age and education level, was analyzed using an aphasia battery. Results demonstrated that older subjects with less education produced fewer content units and were less efficient in transmitting lexico-semantic information. Effects of age and education level on…

Writing research has long attempted to define and assess coherence in written prose; however the researchers have often ignored or inadequately met the needs of writing students who require a simple definition of coherence that they can use to revise their own prose. One exception is Joseph Williams, author of "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity…

As part of a larger Slovene longitudinal study on the impact of the preschool institution on the child's development and his or her school achievements, effects of the age at entry to preschool on children's language were explored. The sample included 82 children, who were divided into two groups depending on their age at entry to the preschool…

The purpose of this study is to ascertain whether the type of instruction (English as vehicular language and English as a subject) is related to the use of reiteration ties. In the first place, we identified, classified, and counted the number and kind of reiteration ties used by two groups of EFL learners. Secondly, we examined whether…

Although spoken language was the subject of attention among Soviet linguists for a short period in the 1920s, it has not attracted much attention since then. The main concern of Soviet linguists has been the forms of written language. Only at the end of the 1960s did linguists begin to record spontaneous speech on tape and study its forms. The…

Focuses on cohesion in discourse and connector usage. The article uses a bottom-up approach and evaluates previous studies of learner connector usage, including literature on contrastive French-English connector usage, and hypothesizes an overuse of connectors. It is concluded that learners should be taught the semantic, stylistic, and syntactic…

Classroom dialogue is an important influence on students' learning, making the structure and content of dialogue important research variables. An analysis of two sample classroom dialogues using the Thematic and Structural Analysis (TSA) Technique shows a positive correlation between the quality of dialogue structure and the level of student…

The use of fictional writing, and in particular fictional dialogue, has gained increasing credibility and popularity within the field of qualitative social science research (Clough, 2002; Denzin, 1997; Tierney, 1998) but research in early childhood education has yet to exploit such methodologies. This article asks: what is meant by the term…

To determine formal principles of discourse processing and production, a study reviewed theories in various disciplines related to language and/or thought and thereby rationalized an approach of quantitative matrix analysis to the problems caused by discrepant discourse structures encountered in second language learning. Statistical analyses of…

A study investigated the use of pronoun and demonstrative reference and ellipsis as cohesive devices in conversation between interlanguage-speaking parents, their children, and the children's classmates. The 24 subjects included eight Italian-, Greek-, and Macedonian-speaking migrant parents, their primary-school-age children, and the children's…

The titles of papers in this document on impromptu or spontaneous speech are as follows: "Impromptu Speech, Structure, and Process"; "Non-Verbal Aspects of Impromptu Speech"; "Echanges, interventions et actes de langage dans la structure de la conversation" ("Exchanges, Interventions, and Speech Acts in the…