The idea that "natural speech" as well as written discourse can be organized is now commonly accepted. There is also evidence that natural speech contains more coherence indicators than written texts do. This article proposes that one type of organizer, pragmatic connectives such as "therefore, then, thus, while, however, but"…

A coding scheme developed by M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan was used in a study that investigated how students in grades 4, 6, and 8 developed meaning within narrative texts. Students, after being presented with a visual stimulus, were asked to describe what was happening and say what happened before and after the picture. Next, an oral assignment…

This paper examines the question of whether two labels should be used for the units traditionally called "sentence" and "clause" or whether the same label should be used and the units distinguished in some other way. Proponents of a two-level analysis have traditionally argued that sentences and clauses can have different…

This newsletter contains five articles. The first, "Discourse Structure in Reading," by Ron Shook, suggests that reading materials for the beginning ESL (English as a second language) reader often have three defects: (1) profusion of detail as question fodder; (2) an oversimplified syntax; and (3) an artificial construction that violates…

This report contains an extensive discussion of an approach to the study of discourse. Initial remarks concern arguments for studying discourse and approaches for discourse study that have been used; the author then discusses the relationship of discourse analysis and generative semantics. Language is considered on two issues: the decisions that a…

Local increases in fundamental frequency (Fo) and large integrals of energy in the syllabic nucleus are known to be among the best acoustical correlates of stress. Major syntactic constituents have been shown to have archetype rapid-rise-then-gradual-fall Fo contours, with the rise into the maximum Fo often associated with the first stressed…

Acoustical correlates of stress can only be evaluated in comparison with some "standard" specifying which syllables are actually stressed. The Standard should be consistent from time to time, and largely independent of talker and listener idiosyncrasies. Three phonetically-trained subjects listened to repeatedly spoken texts and spontaneous…

This study examines how young second language learners acquire academic language. Among the main language groups represented were Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil, Estonian, Serbian, Arabic as well as 23 other language groups. I monitored over 75 students, in grades 1, 2 and 4. I was interested in exploring what strategies best promoted coherence in…

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…

A study of some features of the language usage of nonnative English speakers focused on global communicative competence and the use of text-building devices. Subjects were the primary-school-age children of eight native Italian-, Greek-, and Macedonian-speaking migrant parents and a matched set of native-English-speaking classmates. The language…

In a written discourse consisting of a string of "psychological paragraphs," there is in each such psychological paraqraph a "head" structure containing the topic which derives from the deep structure of the discourse. That "head" assertion differs from all other assertions in the psychological paragraph in that it carries new information. The…

Reading instruction for the college student learning a second language should begin by establishing symbol-sound-meaning association. The step from speech to reading could best be made at the structural level. The emphasis at this point should be on sentence structure and the student should be taught to develop the ability to interpret the…

Three elementary students with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities and aberrant behaviors were taught to initiate and maintain a conversation with nondisabled peers (who were not classmates) utilizing a communication book adaptation. Additionally, all members of their regular education classes were given the information they needed to…

A study to find patterns of cohesion and rhetorical structure that distinguish good from weak English essay writing is described. The corpus consisted of ten Swedish college essays written as part of the final exam in a first-year English course. Methodological problems encountered included the delimitation of units for the analysis of cohesive…

Two theoretical orientations-schema theory and cultural norms for the use of language unify this multidisciplinary collection of papers examining discourse. Chapters by Adams and Collins; Warren; Nicholas and Trabasso; Stein and Glenn; and Freedle and Hale highlight the application of schema theory to the study of story recall, reading, and the…