Recent changes in mathematics curricula, both in South Africa and elsewhere, have begun to change the overwhelmingly symbolic nature of mathematics in schools (in the sense of use of mathematical symbolism), promoting more use of the oral and written language. Engaging students in "Writing-to-Learn" activities in mathematics classrooms…

Effective educators plan reading instruction by considering all of the contributing variables: the students' background knowledge, cultural heritages, oral language, strengths and needs, home influences, as well as the current educational environment and the type of text (expository, narrative ...). Each variable is powerful and could easily…

A multitask speaking measure consisting of both integrated and independent tasks is expected to be an important component of a new version of the TOEFL test. This study considered two critical issues concerning score dependability of the new speaking measure: How much would the score dependability be impacted by (1) combining scores on different…

Realistic spoken discourse, as it actually is used in real-life situations, would not be acceptable in the written medium: the established conventions of the written medium are not adequately equipped to convey the phonological subtleties and undertones of speech. Novelists use dialogue to imitate or mirror reality, but writing carries with it…

Communication scholars have dichotomized language into orality and literacy, with orality being the language of the "concrete" and literacy being the language of the "abstract." However, the human experience of language is not that simplistic. In daily linguistic patterns, written words and the "literal" are not…

Literacy is examined from the viewpoint of systemic linguistics. It is proposed that "literacy" means intervening in the social processes by working with written language, and this can not be accomplished by an individual alone. "Using written language" can not be isolated from "using language." While sociologically,…

An investigation of interrogative structures in French examined the extent to which variation in the structure of the questions was conditioned by their function. Data are drawn from a corpus containing 177 yes/no questions and 117 WH- questions. Findings suggest the following: (1) in identifying the communicative function of interrogatives, it is…

This study examines the use in Japanese of verb forms containing -(r)are in syntactical expressions. The meaning and function of the adversative passive and its behavior vis-a-vis the non-adversative or plain passive is discussed, and the related non-derived constructions and their relationships to the adversative passive are analyzed. Finally the…

The study was designed to explore descriptively the differences in oral language production of three learning disabled children (8 to 9 years old) compared to normal children through observable spontaneous conversational interaction. Spontaneous language samples were videotaped and audiotaped in conversation with the experimenter, a peer, and the…

The evidence on the acquisition of intonation by children is reviewed. Reports on the early use of pitch contours fall into two categories, imitational and differential intonation. While imitational intonation is based on mimicry of adults, differential intonation involves the acquisition of two or three tunes that contrast in meaning from an…

Noting that scholars have too willingly accepted Plato's assumption that one could not successfully be both an actor and a rhapsode (reciter or singer of epic poetry), this paper suggests that placing the "mixed style" of the rhapsode's performance art within the context of the Homeric sensibility and the cultural shift into literacy…

This discussion argues that the development of children's definitions is shaped by a particular orientation to word meaning characteristic of literate language use. This orientation is marked by increased attention to the linguistic form of expressions. To test this argument, a study was undertaken in which eight common nouns, familiar to most…

Story retelling is suggested as a method to evaluate children's ability to comprehend, organize, and express language. (MKM)

Describes experiments that examined the effects of orthographic similarity on lexical decisions and compared decision times to words when they are preceded by unrelated words. Results indicate that lexical decisions about spoken words were shown to be influenced by the spelling of an immediately preceding item. (SED)

An interview with David Olson concerning his current research on the relation between the oral conversational language of preschool children and the formalized language of written texts. (RAE)