Suggests that more attention should be given to semantics if accurate word lists are to be compiled from spoken or written vocabulary. (RB)

Concludes that there are about 88,500 words in printed school English and that even systematic direct vocabulary instruction could not account for a significant proportion of all the words children actually learn, nor cover more than a modest proportion of the words they will encounter in school reading materials. (FL)

This report reviews evidence that there are differences between oral and written English that lead to differences in the skills and knowledge necessary to comprehend them. Three categories of differences are considered in an attempt to derive specific, testable hypotheses: differences in the physical nature of speech and writing, differences in…

Describes a six-week program in which a teacher did not talk to her students but rather wrote all assignments and questions on the board. Concludes that the experiment improved student self-reliance and helped them to read and interpret instructions. (FL)

An exploration of the increasingly important role of linguistics in literacy research and instruction reviews literature on reading comprehension, written language, orthography, metalinguistics, classroom language use, reading disabilities, native tongues, nonstandard dialects, bilingual education, adult literacy, and second-language reading. (86…

This study was conducted to determine the effect that hands-on, creative activity using the Language Experience Approach would have on language usage in students' written stories. Twenty-five fifth grade students were randomly divided into three sample groups. Sample A received hands-on, creative stimulus and art materials; Sample B looked at and…

Starting with a model for explaining comprehension and noncomprehension of verbal material in terms of a match/mismatch principle, this project developed a scale of language usage and explored hypotheses about how comprehension may become possible if a child does not now comprehend some particular oral or written text. Eight separate reports are…

The case study of James, a semiliterate 16-year-old delinquent, illustrates (1) the importance of learners' language strengths, (2) the importance of learners' perceptions about the nature of assigned tasks, and (3) the need to examine reading instruction as a possible contributor to delayed literacy. When James was asked to tape record a story,…

Recently there has been an increasing interest in the development of children's impressions of stories, partially due to the work of theorists who have proposed formal grammars representing structural characteristics of stories. In order to learn more about children's narrative competence, stories they produced were analyzed in three experiments.…

A study investigated children's ability to understand the use of deictic terms in oral and written language. The three deictic categories examined were pronouns (I, you), locatives (this, here), and motion verbs (come, go). Three groups of 24 second grade students completed an oral language task, a written language task, and a picture selection…

The "cognitive clarity theory of reading" represents a resolution of the controversies about the relation between speech, writing, and reading. The work of M.A.K. Halliday suggests that learning to read and write is a natural extension of the "mathetic" speech functions, which consist of speech related to children's attempts to understand…