Examines the development of cohesive discourse among second language learners in light of native speaker discourse norms. Previous studies of cohesion in second language acquisition have failed to consider restrictions on the distribution of cohesive devices in English. Two of these restrictions are discussed. (Author/DJD)

Advocates a method of teaching writing which leads students to discover the rules of written English so that they can then transform a string of grammatical sentences into a coherent discourse. Sample lessons included. Paper presented at the TESOL Convention, March 1969. (FWB)

Faulting the audiolingual method for concentrating primarily on manipulative skills in language learning, the author stresses that the development of true communicative competence involves the learner's conscious awareness of grammar rules and language context. (FWB)

Offers a model which is intended to facilitate the processing of ideational relationships within a paragraph and which is composed of three distinct parts: (1) direct teaching, (2) functional application, and (3) increased student interaction with the text. (FL)

This study used direct observation procedures to analyze communicative intent and subsequent frequency of turntaking between four adults with developmental disabilities and their residential staff. Results suggest that in group discourse, questioning-type speech may set the occasion for a greater number of subsequent conversational turns than does…

Two experiments investigated the focusing properties of thematic roles, and a third examined the view that thematic role preferences reflect a focusing on the consequences of the represented event. Results focus on the structure of represented events, top-down and bottom-up processes, thematic hierarchies and pronoun comprehension. (35 references)…

Examines Nickels's claim that interactive models of lexical access in speech production cannot account for naming data from a group of anomic patients. This paper reiterates that the behavior of connectionist models is not easily predictable without running the appropriate simulations, and discusses the role of frequency in lexical access in…

Examination of syntactic complexity in the movie retellings of 77 elementary school-age Spanish-speaking children revealed developmental differences in the length of T-units, index of subordination, use of relative clauses, and prepositional phrases. Analysis underscores the significance of subordination as a cohesive device and as an indicator of…

This paper describes preliminary development of a microcomputer system to facilitate extended conversation on a broad topic for people of normal intelligence who are physically disabled and lack speech. The paper concludes that, with prestorage and preorganization of potential speech acts, satisfactory computer-assisted, real-time conversations…

George Orwell, in the essay "Politics and the English Language," criticized pretentious doublespeak and technobabble that numb the consciousness and hide political power plays. Judith Butler defends the "nuanced" prose of her fellow postmodernists as necessary to convey the complexity of their thoughts. Stephen Roney contrasts the two and…

It is proposed that the target for teaching pronunciation in English as a Second Language must be the authentic, connected speech that is used by most native speakers, not an artificial and over-correct model too closely tied to the writing system, a different modality entirely. In English, this means learning the language's rhythmic patterns to…

The form of Japanese children's personal narratives is distinctly different from that of English-speaking children. Despite follow-up questions that encouraged them to talk about one personal narrative at length, Japanese children spoke succinctly about collections of experiences rather than elaborating on any one experience. Conversations between…

A computer program devised to analyze text by the use of case grammar is described. The program tests a text against the expectations created by a narrative situation and by the connotative values in the narrator's choice of words. It determines spatial concepts attached to various English words and analyzes the spatial relationships in syntactic…

A study investigating the effects of "text linguists'" revisions on the comprehensibility of expository prose had as subjects 92 high school juniors who read original and revised versions of two passages from a high school history textbook. The revisions included changes regarding the given-new contract, schemata, reference, lexical…

In a study of the effects of time restrictions and passage access on reading comprehension, 128 college freshmen enrolled in two different developmental reading courses were divided into 4 groups of 32 subjects each. (Tests used to assess reading ability at the college level are usually either power tests with liberal time limits, or speed tests,…