This article presents a case study research with aims to find out which activities, methodological and textual aspects used in a reading strategies course were causing a group of students difficulties when analyzing critically written information. We conducted the study at Universidad de Córdoba (Colombia) with seventh semester students from the…

Children's early writing is analyzed in this paper according to different perspectives such as function, grapho-phonemics, syntax, and semantics. Emphasis is given to the semantic perspective of decoding the text and to the study of coherence in text as it is viewed by the reader. Proposition analysis is used to map the coherence of samples of…

Examines the relationship between stages of orthographic development and writing fluency. Finds that the graphemic output lexicon of beginning readers and writers is not sufficiently detailed to allow a fluent output. (PRA)

Two experiments examined characteristics of text that determine when a repeated noun has a clearly identified referent. Verbs and article modifiers appeared to influence whether a noun is merely a repeated word in a text, or whether it is redundant at the propositional level. (SW)

A study investigated children's understanding of the formal and functional aspects of written Chinese in an orthographic acceptability judgment task and a creative spelling task. Subjects were 60 Hong Kong children ages 4 to 9. Results suggest that learning to read and write in Chinese is not accomplished by rote learning of characters but through…

Writing samples representing argumentation, exposition, narration, and description were gathered from 51 fifth-grade pupils. Significant differences were found among the four modes of writing and among high-, medium-, and low-ability groups for T-unit length, clauses per T-unit, and clause length. Argumentation produced the most complex writing,…

Research about the interrelationship between reading comprehension and written production is reported that is assumed to contribute to teaching syllabi in these areas, by the nature of the processes that underlie reading and writing. Reading and writing are shown to be two sides of the same cognitive process. (26 references) (LB)

Summarizes a study of advanced ESL university students from eight first-language backgrounds and discusses the proficiency differences found between several groups in processing two types of information patterns in written English. Suggests possible variables in cognitive strategies and skills related to the students' different cultural/linguistic…

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…

Writing samples representing argumentation, exposition, narration, and description were gathered from 52 fourth-grade pupils. Significant differences were found among the four modes of writing and among high, medium, and low ability groups, for T-unit length and clauses per T-unit; lesser differences also were found for clause length.…

The findings from research on written and oral summarization are discussed under three headings: summarizers' strategies, improving summarizers' performance, and the assessment of summary quality. Objective measures of summary quality used by researchers are described, and ways these measures could be adapted for use in higher education assessment…

A study was conducted (1) to examine the development of comprehension and production in written language of two aspects of linguistic knowledge, knowledge of ambiguity and paraphrase; and (2) to examine the influences of reading ability as measured by currently used standardized reading tests and of sex on the development of this knowledge of…

Explored the effect of giving novice foreign language readers information about the rhetorical structure of an expository text as a text adjunct. Results indicated that an expanded framework is an effective text adjunct for the comprehension of the expository prose. (27 references) (Author/CB)

One of a series of semi-annual reports, this publication contains 25 articles which report the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instruments for its investigation, and practical applications. Articles are as follows: "Acoustic Shards, Perceptual Glue" (Robert E. Remez and Philip E. Rubin); "F0 Gives Voicing…

Four papers on contrastive linguistics include: (1) "The Search for an Ideal Theoretical Model in Applied Contrastive Linguistics: A Wild Goose Chase" (Herman Wekker, Flor Aarts), which argues that contrastive linguists should feel free to adopt an eclectic approach to theory since no single linguistic model can be adopted in its entirety and…