Studied the use of punctuation in children's early writings in connection with organization of the text. Collected 134 stories of second graders written in Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian. Children tried to make sense of writing conventions, including the use of punctuation, and some tried to distinguish the functions of punctuation marks. (SLD)

Examines recent studies of linguistic corpora in Italian, and presents the results of an analysis of "piace" and "piacciono" conducted on a corpus of 3.5 million words of written Italian, accessible at the University of Birmingham in England. Focuses on pedagogical applications of the data and on the inductive methodologies…

In 4 experiments, the authors addressed the mechanisms by which grammatical gender (in Italian and German) may come to affect meaning. In Experiments 1 (similarity judgments) and 2 (semantic substitution errors), the authors found Italian gender effects for animals but not for artifacts; Experiment 3 revealed no comparable effects in German. These…

This study assesses children's understanding of the Italian modal verbs "dovere" (must) and "potere" (may) in their dual function of qualification of the speaker's beliefs (epistemic modality) and behaviour regulation (deontic modality). 192 children and 60 adults participated in the experiment. Children aged 3;0 to 9;2 were presented with two…

In this article, the author presents the memoir of Angelo Patri, a very important and well-known educational figure during the first of the last century in his educational career. In 1917 Patri published Schoolmaster of the Great City, which gives readers vivid impressions of his early life in Italy and New York, his family and community, his…

Swain (1985) pointed out the need for increased modified output in the classroom in order to encourage learners to engage in more syntactic processing and, thus, make more form-meaning connections. Research in content-based instruction (CBI) ( Musumeci, 1996; Pica, 2002) has revealed few occasions of pushed modified output from learners.…

Malta has experienced various linguistic influences over the course of time. Maltese and English are presently the official languages of the island. Nevertheless, Italian was never completely erased from the Maltese linguistic scene and over the past years its popularity has increased considerably because of the influence of Italian television…

Gives the results of the language examinations given in the spring of 1974 in the people's colleges. Examination fields were: German as a foreign language, Russian, Spanish, English, English (Hotel work), Italian, French. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Two Australian language curriculum development projects are discussed: the Australian Language Levels (ALL) Project and the National Assessment Framework for Languages at Senior Secondary Level (NAFLSSL). While distinct, both projects are closely linked. Each project was launched in 1985 in a favorable climate and in response to cost, enrollment,…

An investigation was conducted by students in a linguistics seminar which had two parts, a matched-guise questionnaire and a semantic differential questionnaire. The content and results of the latter are presented here. The objective of this part of the study was to determine what attitudes French-speaking Swiss students had toward languages they…

Current opinion regarding the nature of the young child's representation of two or more languages is that there is one system during the earliest stages of development. This paper explores theoretical and methodological difficulties underlying this issue. Theoretically, it is questioned what is being claimed about the child's cognitive capacities…

This guide provides material for introducing ethnic studies in the early elementary school curriculum. The publication can be appropriately used at more than a single grade level. The first section, a manual for pupils, examines the everyday lives of two cousins in two Sicilian communities. The experiences of a third cousin, living in an ethnic…

A SUMMARY IS GIVEN OF EVALUATIONS MADE BY FOUR CURRICULUM COMMITTEES OF THE GERMAN, ITALIAN, RUSSIAN, AND SPANISH PROGRAMS OFFERED IN ONTARIO SECONDARY SCHOOLS. FOR EACH LANGUAGE, AN OUTLINE OF THE SPECIAL PROBLEMS PERTAINING TO THE PARTICULAR LANGUAGE, AN ASSESSMENT OF THE LATEST TEACHING AIDS, MATERIALS, AND METHODS, AND AN OUTLINE OF A PROPOSED…

BOOKLISTS WERE PREPARED FOR COUNTRIES WHOSE LANGUAGES ARE FREQUENTLY TAUGHT IN THE UNITED STATES. THESE BIBLIOGRAPHIES WERE PREPARED PRIMARILY FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS, BUT COULD ALSO BE USED BY PERSONS INTERESTED IN THE COUNTRY'S CULTURE. THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION (MLA) REQUESTED KNOWLEDGEABLE PERSONS TO SUBMIT LISTS OF RECOMMENDED BOOKS,…

This dissertation compares the relative effects of two contrasting approaches to bilingual instruction and of bilingual education as compared to traditional English monolingual education upon the dual language development and use of a group of first and second grade Italian dominant students. The sample of the study consisted of 106 Italian…