Concentration on the formal features of language and on developing speaking skills in a second language fails to provide the language student with the necessary level of conversational ability. The concept of communicative competence has resulted in a new emphasis on the nature of interaction and the rules of discourse. Interest has shifted from…

Papers are presented from the New Jersey Department of Higher Education Summer Institute. Focus is on sociolinguistic, anthropological, social psychological, pedagogical, and socio-political-economic considerations. Each analyzes particular factors that influence the form and quality of bilingual policy and instruction programs, and offers…

Exploring writing in its many social and cultural variations, the seven articles in the first part of this book show different genres of writing serving various purposes in diverse contexts, while the six articles in the second part examine the effects of oral language differences on the learning and teaching of writing. Topics covered in the…

The assumption that question-answer sequences consist of two moves was examined using data from recordings of second-grade classrooms in Austin, Texas. Interactions initiated by children's spontaneous questions in informal, small group settings were evaluated. Twenty-nine dialogue samples are presented and analyzed. Four issues in the study of…

This booklet is a guide to the various aspects of bilingual education. It consists of the following chapters: (1) "Sink or Swim Educational Approach" (which discusses the practice of ignoring the linguistic problems of non-English-speaking children in American schools), (2) "Bilingual Instruction" (the two methods of teaching English to linguistic…

An examination of the linguistic behavior of monolingual and bilingual Spanish-speaking children in an environment where there is opportunity to develop proficiency in two languages is examined. A review of the literature concerned with the relationship of learning processes to psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic contexts precedes an examination…

Four behavioral scientists in a colloquium at the University of Wisconsin discussed various aspects of language learning. Concerned primarily with pre-high-school pupils and addressing their remarks to language teachers, the scientists offered these proposals: (1) language teaching is more effective if taught in a natural setting, (2)…

Until the coming of World War II, little interest was shown in the teaching of Japanese outside Japan except for the elementary schools set up to inculcate the ways of the homeland among the offspring of Japanese emigrants to places like Hawaii, the Pacific Coast of North America, and Brazil. A few European and American universities offered…

This report summarizes the language background information and certain demographic characteristics of language minorities in the United States. The data were derived from the Survey of Languages, a pilot study of the non-English-language background population aged four and older sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics as part of…

Little is known about how children gain interpersonal access in settings where adults are not present or are unavailable. This study sought to describe children's strategies for access into and withdrawal from peer interactive episodes in a nursery school. Data were collected from direct observations of two groups of children. One group attended…

This study is an inquiry into the processes of linguistic adaptation. Its purpose was to investigate the factors which are likely to influence change and retention of regional dialects outside of their regional context. Specifically, the focus of the study was on native Oklahoma speech in the Tulare area of rural California. Data were gathered…

This paper argues that context is an important factor to be considered in linguistic analysis. Context is defined as the aggregate of linguistic, situational, social and cultural variables that surround linguistic units such as texts, discourses, utterances, words, morphemes, phonemes, sounds, and distinctive features. A "textual…

Teacher talk can be characterized as a "caregiving" style which has certain identifiable phonological, lexical, and grammatical features. Analysis of classroom discourse can make teachers and students of language aware of the process of communication, and can identify particular uses of nonverbal as well as verbal communication. This, in…

The purposes of this study are stated to be twofold: (1) to determine the relative effects of the native language and black dialect influences on the oral English performance of Puerto Rican pupils in mainland schools and (2) to assess the relationship of these sources of linguistic interference with aural ability in English, reading ability in…

This study examined acquisition and development of children's social/symbolic and strategic communication abilities within a sociolinguistic model of communicative competence. The major theoretical perspective was derived from Mead's symbolic interactionism and the cognitive-developmental theories of Piaget and Werner. Role-taking was the central…