Collocation is an aspect of language generally considered arbitrary by nature and problematic to L2 learners who need collocational competence for effective communication. This study attempts, from the perspective of L2 learners, to have a deeper understanding of collocational use and some of the problems involved, by adopting a task based…

The first of two papers on language history broadly defines historical linguistics and considers the activities of the descriptive linguist, who classifies the features of a language; the comparative linguist, who relates languages to one another; and the historical linguist, who is interested in the changes, completed and anticipated, of a living…

The minimum linguistic competence required of an English teacher must be sufficient knowledge to assess continuously the role of direct teaching of linguistics in the classroom; to express, directly or not, views about the nature of language and the structure of English which accord with the best scholarship available; and to counterbalance the…

Traditions and emerging trends in the teaching of linguistics and composition are examined in this collection of papers. Joseph Mersand predicts a future emphasis on the subject of English as a discipline, leading to a more adequate preparation and increased supervision of English teachers and a greater stress in the classroom on written…

The approaches of traditional grammar, descriptive linguistics, and generative grammar are largely complementary rather than exclusive. Traditional grammar defines eight parts of speech according to meaning or function and concerns itself almost wholely with the written language. Descriptive linguistics postulates that English has a set of unique…

For the beginning or general student, dialectology and the history of the English language can both be taught with a common frame of reference provided by certain principles of linguistic change. Related in obvious ways with the history of language but often overlooked in dialectology, these principles are (1) that any living language is certain…

An attempt to fill the gap between the purely theoretical and the purely practical, this book provides the classroom teacher with a set of principles for using linguistics in devising and evaluating teaching techniques. Briefly, the chapters (1) present some special learning principles that distinguish language learning from other types of…

TO DISPEL THE MYSTERIES SURROUNDING LINGUISTICS, ENGLISH TEACHERS SHOULD UNDERSTAND CERTAIN FEATURES OF THE LANGUAGE AS THEY ARE PERCEIVED BY THE LINGUIST. THE LINGUIST SEES LANGUAGE AS "A SYSTEM OF PATTERNED VOCAL BEHAVIOR BY MEANS OF WHICH MEN COOPERATE IN SOCIETY." BY USING RIGOROUS SCIENTIFIC METHODS, HE STUDIES REPRESENTATIVE AND AUTHENTIC…

An article and a bibliography constitute this issue of the "Illinois English Bulletin." In "Keep the Natives from Getting Restless," Barry Gadlin examines native language learning by children from infancy through high school and discusses the theories of several authors concerning the teaching of the native language. The "Bibliography of…

The purpose of this study was to determine statistically significant linguistic features of oral and written discourse rated quite high or low by teachers, and to make recommendations based on these findings to supplement existing guidelines for teaching composition. Fifty-five paired oral (tape-recorded) and written compositions were elicited…

In one essay of this collection of four, Kenneth L. Pike explores the value of exercises which are based on axioms about language structure and which are designed specifically to develop writing competence; he lists eight tagmemic principles accompanied by suggested exercises. In another essay, Pike differentiates the roles of linguist and…

This study compared a grammar program using a linguistic approach with one using a traditional approach to determine how each affects children's ability (1) to construct sentences which have variety in structure, and (2) to comprehend silent reading. Five experimental and five control classes of fourth-grade children were randomly selected from…

Deliberately pedagogical in its orientation, this book presents the essentials of English structure in a framework derived from modern linguistic theory and in a way that should be comprehensible to beginning students. The book is intended to offer students an understanding of what is involved in the scholarly study of language as they acquire an…

Traces the history of the speech of New Yorkers, compares the speech of New Yorkers with the speech of those living elsewhere in America, and discusses the low prestige of New York City pronunciation. (DD)