Over three days, 180 junior and senior high school English teachers, postsecondary (university and college) writing instructors, workplace (corporate and small business) writing instructors, and government officials who are responsible for portfolios related to workforce training and literacy met to understand from a broad systems-level…

Adult literacy interventions often rely on models of reading validated with children or adult populations with a broad range of reading abilities. Such models do not fully satisfy the need for intervention research and development for adults with low literacy. Thus, the authors hypothesized that a model representing the relationship between…

Speech production/articulation was examined in 20 reading disordered children and 20 control subjects (mean age for all subjects of 14 years). The reading disordered subjects made significantly more speech production errors than normal subjects on all tasks, suggesting underlying deficits in phonological processing. (Author/DB)

The study evaluated the ability of six learning disabled adolescents with normal language ability and eight learning disabled adolescents with deficient language skills to appropriately mark ambiguous referents. Subjects were compared with control groups of normally achieving chronologically age matched adolescents and children matched with the…

The teaching of English in the United Kingdom has undergone change during the last decade and is presently in a state of flux. Current language concerns, mainly involving students 11-18 years old, may be viewed in three ways. Students' use of language should be encouraged in the classroom through expressive talk but with teacher guidance and…

Examines whether the type of pictorial stimulus affects the quality of an individual's written expression. Compared a pictorial stimulus to a conventional line drawing stimulus in its ability to evoke writing samples. Results of 50 respondents, ages 13 to 46, indicated that the type of prompt used in an assessment of written expression makes a…

This study analyzed spoken narratives of 10 high-achieving and 10 under-achieving gifted adolescents. Results suggested that language problems are common in underachievers. Variables contributing most to differences were number of complete episodes produced, number of statements referring to characters' internal states, reactions of characters to…

This pamphlet is the ninth in a series of ten stemming from the view that language is central to learning, that teachers can gain insights into their work and into learning by examining the language of the classroom, and that current language theory can be the means to such insights. The pamphlet describes a project that was undertaken to discover…

The authors describe a developmental approach for teaching expressive writing skills to learning disabled adolescents. General guidelines for remediation are outlined, and activities useful in a developmental writing approach are listed. (SW)

Sixteen students (ages 11-17) with profound hearing impairment, assessed as having either good or poor speech intelligibility, were asked to describe pictures and to respond to a series of clarification requests. Significant differences emerged in repair strategies used by the two groups and in comparison with normal hearing peers despite similar…

The manual teaches SignFont, a written form of sign language. Following a brief introduction, the first of three major sections describes the SignFont alphabet, structured according to the parts of every sign that is written (handshape, action area, location, movement). The second section discusses in greater detail how the SignFont characters are…

Evaluated were language production deficits in 32 learning disabled (LD) adolescents. Ss were administered a battery of subtests containing tasks sensitive to language production difficulties in cognition, convergent and divergent production of semantic units, word retrieval, and retrieval of syntactic structures. Results indicated that speech…

Notes that a difficulty with the multigenre paper assignment is that educators assume that students are familiar enough with the various genres to write skillfully in the genres they select. Suggests that multigenre assignments can be improved by changing forms and format; changing perspectives; and changing boundaries. Concludes that multigenre…

Points up some techniques for teaching students the age and origin of words and phrases used in American simile and metaphor, resulting in a heightened feeling for literary style and increased appreciation of creative writing. (Author/RB)