Results demonstrate that adolescents experience enduring fright reactions from scary television shows and films, yet their mothers are often unaware of their responses. Concludes that family communication about how and when a child is frightened is poor. (PD)

Examines gender differences in topical coherence of same-sex best friends' conversations using John Gumperz's framework for cross-cultural communication. Finds that girls exhibit minimal or no difficulty in finding something to talk about. Finds that boys exhibit more discomfort, with tenth grade boys talking about their own highly personal…

Presents an exploratory study in which four students from each of grades 4, 6, 8, and 10 were interviewed individually on aspects of variation present in three settings. The first setting was an isolated random sampling situation whereas the other two settings were real world sampling situations. Identifies and describes four levels of responding…

Uses cloze techniques to examine the development of writers' memory for their own texts. Finds 70% accuracy on writer's cloze to be a consistent cutoff score for detection of plagiarism. Suggests that teachers should be aware that students remember their self-generated texts very well and that these standards can be used to detect and deter…

The results of a large scale (N=1001) cross-sectional (Years 6, 8 and 10) study of students' ideas about the composition of unpolluted air, the nature of air pollution, the biological consequences of air pollution, and about acid rain and the Greenhouse Effect are reported. A range of persistent alternative conceptions were identified, in some…

GRADES OR AGES: Grades 4-12. SUBJECT MATTER: Drug education. ORGANIZATION AND PHYSICAL APPEARANCE: The guide consists of a series of color-coded units, one for each grade, followed by several appendixes. Units are either in column or list form. The guide is xeroxed and looseleaf-bound with a soft cover. OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES: The curriculum…

Objective: To explore the relationship between peer social network positions and smoking experimentation among Chinese adolescents. Methods: Self-administered questionnaires were administered to 1040 adolescents in grades 6, 8, and 10. Paired-friendship linkages were used to assign participants into 3 mutually exclusive social network positions.…

Background: The reported prevalence of bully-victims and aggressive/provocative victims varies quite considerably in previous research, and only a few studies have reported prevalence rates across grades. There is also a lack of detailed analyses of the extent to which victims are also bullies, and bullies are also victims. Aims: To study the…

GRADES OR AGES: Grades 6-12. SUBJECT MATTER: French language, literature, and civilization. ORGANIZATION AND PHYSICAL APPEARANCE: The guide is divided into seven sections, one for each grade. Each section is in list form. It is mimeographed and spiral bound with a paper cover. OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES: Each section lists several general…

Examines the relationship between syntactic complexity and quality ratings of narrative and argumentative writing of students in grades 6, 10, and 12. (HOD)

In an incidental memory task, second, sixth, and tenth-grade students performed three orientating tasks on different subsets of items in a list of common nouns. In one condition (EPA), children judged words on the Evaluative, Potency and Activity dimensions of the semantic differential. In another condition (EEE) children made phonetic judgments.…

In order to determine the effects of writing for different audiences and in different modes of discourse on the syntactic complexity of compositions written by sixth and tenth grade students, 240 students were asked to write in three different modes (argumentive, descriptive, and narrative) to be read by a teacher and a best friend. There was a…

Uses Halliday and Hasan's taxonomy of cohesive devices to examine the kinds of cohesive ties used in arguments and narratives at grades 6, 10, and 12. Investigates whether there are differences between both grade levels and modes. (AEW)

Reports a study that examined sixth- and 10th-grade students' ability to generate orthographic and phonetic derivatives for three predominant vowel-alternation patterns characteristic of internal derivational morphology. Results support the hypothesis that a productive knowledge of these patterns in orthography precedes a productive knowledge of…

A stratified random sample of 686 elementary and secondary public school students in rural areas of Utah classed as rapidly or not rapidly growing was administered the Mooney Problem Check List. Effects related to rapid or slow community growth were specific to grade level and to problem domains of the check list. (BRR)