Recitations and discussions are two types of interactions which have long been of interest to researchers who study classroom discourse in secondary English and Social Studies. According to research, teachers control the discourse during recitations through "inauthentic" questions requiring pre-specified answers. In contrast, discussions involve…

The most frequently noted difference in the abilities of tenth graders and college seniors to recall sentence connectives was the college students' ability to engage in free recall and rewriting, indicating that such a task would be a good predictor of mature use of transformational sentence connectives in the study of English. (JD)

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

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)

A study of discourse synthesis (readers/writers composing new texts by selecting, organizing, and connecting content from source texts) examined the performance of accomplished and less accomplished readers in the 6th, 8th, and 10th grades on a report-writing task. Over a 3-day period 60 English/language arts students wrote informational reports…

Examines issues confronting English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students in mainstream content areas at the secondary school level. Research on the integration of language, content, literacy, and culture in courses is reconducted at a Canadian school with a concentration of Asian background students. Focuses on discourse contexts for mainstreamed…