Sometimes a single word changes everything. In his groundbreaking book "Choice Words", Peter Johnston demonstrated how the things teachers say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for the literate lives of students. Now, in "Opening Minds: Using Language to Change Lives", Peter shows how the words teachers choose affect the worlds students…

Surveys of employers continually highlight the need for better communication skills among recent college graduates. Yet, writing instruction in higher education serves far more than a transactional purpose. Writing facilitates learning, helps students gain skills in analysis and synthesis, and supports a range of other personal and intellectual…

This article discusses research into the question of whether the expectation of hereditary factors in man's unique form of communication is supported by any evidence. The research is divided into three broad categories, dealing with voice, with speech, and with language. (CFM)

Thirteen papers given by language specialists are presented. These analyze special linguistic (semantic) problems that occur when interconnected strings of sentences constitute data base; they also analyze special psychological problems (of memory, inference, and motivation) that occur when human subjects are exposed to discourse materials in…

Twelve one-word-stage children were given minimally contrasting two-word instructions. Since non-linguistic cues were eliminated, comprehension involved making non-syntactic inferences from the word combinations. The children could respond correctly to some of the instructions, and even carried out some unfamiliar activities. (Author/SW)

This work investigated the young child's ability to respond appropriately to the intended, as opposed to the literal, meaning of one class of such utterances, requests for action. An action-based response heuristic is proposed to explain the apparent ability of two-year-olds to deal with indirect speech acts. (Author/SW)

Deals with problems arising in teaching English in the Hauptschule ("practical branch" secondary school, grades 7-10). Discusses, among other things, cultivation of the ability to understand the FL as a means of motivating the slow learner, with English teaching oriented toward projects and practical matters. (Text is in German.)…

This book concludes a six-volume review of research and theory on learning and cognition. Its six chapters cover the following topics: theories of semantic memory, comprehension and memory of text, coding processes in memory, perceptual learning from reading, speech perception, and the organization and core concepts of learning theory and…

In this experiment, children were given three words (a triplet made up of two nouns and one verb) and were asked to produce an utterance with them. The results were analyzed in terms of word order chosen and age of child. (NCR)

The present study aimed: (1) to systematically describe and classify the speech input received by children of specified ages from their mothers in the home, (2) to investigate the interdependence between the quality of the mother's speech, her socio-cultural background, and her children's level of intelligence, and (3) to determine whether some…

Describes a method used to teach lipreading to deaf children in Germany. The presentation of a printed word on a flashcard with its spoken counterpart produced dramatic improvements in lipreading, speech, and reading development. (MB)

Research evidence currently indicates that young children's communication skills for both the speaker and the listener roles are often ineffective. The accuracy of children's communication improves gradually over the elementary school years. Current thinking in the area of metacognition may be very useful in understanding the development of…

Describes a course at the University of Missouri that gives doctoral students a chance to explore teaching issues in a setting that emphasizes reflection, critical thinking, and individual risk taking. Discusses how the class approaches learning about college students' intellectual development; curriculum design for programs in journalism and mass…

Children's early utterances were studied to determine whether there are developmental changes in the content, context, frequency, and form of their speech and the degree to which the changes correspond to changes in Piagetian cognitive stage. Twenty children were studied; six were 10 or 11 months old, and the remaining 14 were distributed evenly…

The utilization of non-professional personnel as language teachers was investigated using forty residents and an equal number of controls who were matched on the variables of CA, IQ, and Language Age (mean CA 13.28 and mean IQ 33). Two former psychiatric aids were trained as language developmentalists by classroom experiences, informal discussions…