This study examined givenness in discourse via passive constructions in research articles. While it is commonly held in grammar books and grammar classes that the passive voice is the counterpart of the active voice, the present study argues that Argument movement in passive constructions can act as a syntactic device contributing to sound…

New and flexible educational paradigms, based on creative, innovative and open-minded competences, are required in the development of curricula in design, working as an essential skill toolkit for future designers, particularly in higher education. This study aims to explore how learning outcomes, usually expressed by the knowledge, skills,…

Although previous research has observed a facilitative influence of the first language (L1) on the acquisition and processing of gender agreement in a second language (L2), particularly in language pairs with similar gender agreement marking, the question of whether knowledge of two languages with gender can confer an additional advantage for…

The course will focus on the role of the editor in organizational settings, including creating successful writer/editor collaboration. Students will gain practice in editing documents for grammar, syntax, organization, style, emphasis, document design, graphics, and user-centered design. The course will provide an introduction to technology for…

During the last years there has been an increasing interest in examining the brain responses to word order variations. In one ERP study conducted in Spanish, Casado, Martin-Loeches, Munoz, and Fernandez-Frias (2005) had participants read Spanish transitive sentences with either an SVO (subject-verb-object) or an OVS order. The word order of a…

This study compares quantitative and qualitative results for task-based second language (L2) grammar instruction conducted as whole-class, teacher-led discourse (TLD) versus small-group, learner-led discourse (LLD). Participants included 78 English-speaking adults from six university classes of beginning L2 Spanish, with two assigned to each…

Good writing is good sentences. It is a simple truth that many in the business of teaching writing have strayed from. Good writing is a first sentence that makes a reader want to read the second sentence, a second sentence that makes a reader want to read the third, and so on. Erika Lindemann suggests that certain types of sentence instruction can…

Writing samples of 50 learning disabled college students were analyzed for fluency and errors of 14 types: omission of words and/or letters, noun plurals, syntax, subject-verb agreement, verb forms and tense, pronoun reference, shifts in person, fused or spliced sentences, fragments, punctuation, capitalization, usage, spelling, and apostrophe…

A two-dimensional system used by speakers of Spanish to make imperative utterances is outlined. The system consists of the basic verb forms that make up the nuclei of such utterances and oblique marker usage, which consists for the most part of syntactic modification of base forms. (Author/HP)

An analysis is given of certain clitic pronouns that are the source of confusion in the classroom and for which fully satisfying explanations are not to be found in traditional grammars and contemporary studies. (Author/HP)

Investigates how the purpose of three types of business and technical documents (instructions, annual reports, and sales promotional letters) affects the syntactical and rhetorical choices authors make in writing these documents. Outlines partial syntactical and rhetorical "fingerprints" of these documents to offer students norms they can go by in…

Maintaining that two kinds of ambiguity--ambiguous prepositional phrases and ambiguous modification of conjoined elements--account for a large number of ambiguous sentences in technical writing, this paper presents an algebraic analysis of each kind of ambiguity. It then suggests a number of ways in which each ambiguity may be unclear. By using…

A course in introductory Greek was introduced as part of a freshman seminar program at William Patterson College of New Jersey. The course was distinctive in that the instructor undertook to learn the subject along with the students. The goal of the course was that the students would learn something about Greek, about language in general and about…

Eye movement data were collected for 28 college students reading 32 sentences with sentence verification questions. The factors observed were target sentence voice (active/passive), probe voice, and correct response (true/false). Pairs of subjects received the same set of stimuli, but with agents and objects in the sentences reversed. As expected,…

Reports on a study designed to investigate the results of intensive sentence-combining practice on the written and oral syntactic fluency of college students of French. (AM)