Noting that issues surrounding grammar instruction are a source of controversy within the English language arts curriculum, this concept paper examines the usefulness of formal instruction in naming parts of speech, diagramming sentences, naming types of phrases and clauses, and naming sentence types. Following an introduction that defines…

Over the past several years, technical communicators have been struggling to change some of the stylistic traditions inherited from scientific discourse. Rhetoricians, writing teachers, and psychologists all agree that the use of analogy and first- or second-person sentence construction make for more effective communication than the absence of…

For the purpose of investigating instructional techniques that facilitate children's acquisition of reading comprehension skills in the middle and upper elementary grades, a 2-year inquiry into classroom instruction in reading comprehension was begun at the beginning of 1980. The initial focus of the study was on methods of assessment. Analytic…

Child acquisition of Mandarin was studied with four middle class families from Taipei, Taiwan. The 2-year-olds were taped at home playing with their families. Two of the children were taped for short periods (7 hours and 9 hours), while the other two children were studied biweekly for 14 months, which resulted in 71 hours of transcribed child…

The benefits for students of English as a second language of reading abstracts are considered, and the functions and types of abstracts are reviewed. In addition, the results of a survey of Ben Gurion University (Israel) lecturers regarding their reading habits and use of abstracts are briefly addressed. It is suggested that when abstracts are…

The feedback model of maternal language indicates that maternal language development is tailored to child feedback. The conversational model indicates that adjustment in mothers' speech occurs before the onset of child language. In order to verify the validity of these models, the language of mothers of six hearing and six deaf 13- to…

This paper reports on a study in which the speech and the writing of college freshmen were compared. Spoken samples were gathered from classroom discussion; written samples were taken from pieces written on the discussion material in a later class session. Spoken and written samples from an "A" student, a "B+" student, a "B" student, and a "C"…

This article discusses the deficiencies of the Audiolingual method and provides examples of ways to combine grammar and context in drills, in order to enable students to communicate. A practical application of the theory is described through the Hue University program. (AM)

This curriculum guide for English as a Second Language (ESL) Level V is the fifth of six in the Guam Community College ESL project series. The other five guides, a companion teacher's guide, and pre- and post-tests are available separately (see note). The entire project centers around the Peabody Kits P, Level P, Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and the…

Produced in response to a school board's directive to develop a plan for implementing a standardized curriculum in the basic subjects on a district-wide basis, this instructional packet is intended for use by teachers of a course in functional basic English skills for eleventh grade students. The packet contains preparatory sheets, activity…

Produced in response to a school board's directive to develop a plan for implementing a standardized curriculum in the basic subjects on a district-wide basis, this instructional guide is intended for teachers of a course in language arts basic skills for middle school and junior high school students. The guide contains preparatory sheets,…

This investigation provides descriptive information about the developmental characteristics of syntactic and morphological structures found in the written Spanish language of native Spanish-speaking students in fourth to ninth grades. A sample population composed of 34 male and 56 female Spanish-speaking students was randomly selected from two…

This research discusses the probability of child witnesses providing a complete and accurate description of an event. Children have been regarded as particularly inaccurate, highly suggestible, and basically unreliable in court cases. Psychologists have concluded that younger children are much more suggestible than older children or adults, and a…

Comprehension of reversible active and passive sentences was studied with 48 Japanese children between the ages of two and six. Four types of sentences were constructed using passive and active structures and two word orders: subject-object-verb (SOV) and object-subject-verb (OSV). The basic order of elements in a simple sentence in Japanese is…

This work treats some of the important issues encountered in an attempt to synthesize natural sounding English speech from arbitrary written text. Details of the systems that interact in producing speech are described. The principal systems dealt with are phonology (intonation), phonetics, syntax, semantics, and text-view (discourse). Technical…