An instructional manual for reference use in college and university teaching is presented, based on a 2-year study of the specific difficulties that students have in receptive communication (listening and reading) in introductory courses. Although the investigation focused primarily on the disciplines of psychology, physics, and philosophy, many…

Certain word-order patterns are more basic and less marked than others. The more strongly marked a pattern seems to be in isolation, the stronger must be the contextual forces motivating its use, if it is to seem natural in a text. Various topicalizations (of adverbials, objects, and parts of verb phrases, for example) need various degrees of…

A fundamental problem in the study of spontaneous speech is how to segment it for analysis. The segments should be relevant for the study of linguistic structures, speech planning, speech production, or communication strategies. Operational rules for segmentation should consider a wide variety of criteria and be hierarchically ordered. This is…

Formulaic speech, expressions learned as unanalyzed wholes and used on particular occasions by native speakers, is contrasted to "grammatical" sentences using novel combinations of words in the second language classroom. The speech produced by three limited English-speaking children in an English program suggests that formulaic speech…

A series of studies was conducted to explore three trends that have emerged from sentence combining research: (1) students with lower abilities in sentence combining and reading comprehension tend to register higher gains in both areas as a result of sentence combining instruction; (2) the broader the range of any student's sentence combining…

A study examined the differences and similarities in the relationship between the organization of written English produced by native Chinese, English, and Spanish speaking adult college students when they wrote in the narrative and expository modes. Specifically, the study explored the kinds of cohesive devices that operated in the English text…

To determine whether reading and writing are as closely related as commonly supposed, a study estimated the amount of overlap that exists between several components of reading and writing knowledge. Data were obtained from 256 second graders and 251 fifth graders. Reading measures included tests of phonics (word knowledge), vocabulary (lexical…

To study the effects of writers' attending to the informational needs of their readers (episodic perspective taking), each of 65 college freshmen was randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: (1) no attention to audience, (2) attention to audience during prewriting, and (3) attention to audience during revising. All three groups…

A cross-linguistic comparison of syntax acquisition patterns examined preferential subject omission in the naturally-occurring speech of three Japanese toddlers from the Tokyo area and compared the findings to data on English acquisition. Results indicate that acquisition patterns of Japanese do not mirror those of English with regard to this…

A handbook to the grammar of Mauritanian Arabic (Hassaniya) is intended for Peace Corps volunteers, and is designed to focus attention on proper grammatical forms. Lesson topics include the article, personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, negation of the implied verb "to be," noun gender, adjective gender, number, "there is/are and…

This booklet is intended to assist tutors in helping transitional and low-level adult basic education (ABE) students acquire the language skills required to make a successful adjustment to regular ABE classes. The exercises provided are intended primarily for use in student-tutor learning teams, with students gradually completing greater portions…

Encompassing reading and writing skills exercises, this book is a GED (General Educational Development) preparatory workbook designed to provide the student with all the skills needed to pass the reading and writing sections of the GED exam. Designed as a supplementary text for use in American Indian adult education programs, the workbook is…

A study was conducted to examine learning from textbook sentences that provide examples. It was predicted that an example written succinctly and with a word order that emphasized its parallel semantic relations with the exemplified principle, such as "animals have parasites; dogs have fleas," would have a positive effect on idea comprehension. It…

Perspectives of the field of psycholinguistics and second language research are examined to provide a broader understanding of language learning and language behavior. Psycholinguistics, which uses the approaches of psychology and linguistics is defined as the search for an understanding of how humans comprehend and produce language. Based on the…

Drawn from a conference that addressed the role of sentence combining in the teaching of writing, the papers in this collection are divided into three sections: the theory of sentence combining, research in sentence combining, and sentence combining in the classroom. The 22 papers discuss a variety of topics, including the following: (1) sentence…