Investigation of commonalities in children's language across tasks showed that children with literate and oral speech styles made both contrastive and similar types of adaptations when portraying events through play and oral narration. As they moved from playing to narrating, both groups edited more carefully and employed more explicit language.…

An approach to written composition built upon knowledge of the linguistic environments of inner-city blacks is described.

This is one in a series of eight discussion pamphlets produced by the Writing Across the Curriculum Project dealing with some of the issues connected with writing in the schools and their relation to learning. This pamphlet explores differences between students' talk and their writing in school contexts. It notes the value of expressive…

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…

This issue contains the following articles: "A Portfolio Program for Teaching English Composition," by Charles J. Fox and Robert Tippetts: "TESL Curriculum: The Foundation Is What Counts," by William D. Conway: "English Oral Language," by Allan D. Patterson: "Using a Telephone Directory to Teach English as a Second Language," by Jason B. Alter;…

This study investigated the relationship of dialect and race of five and six-year old boys to a listener's ability to report the oral response of boys to ten vocabulary items from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). A group of 20 black and 20 white college students viewed videotapes of eight first grade boys who represented four…

This issue contains the following articles: "Behaviorist and Rationalist Psychology and Language Teaching Theory," by William Gallagher; "TESL and Speech Communication," by Kay M. Yamada; "More on Using a Telephone Directory to Teach English as a Second language," by Betty M. Crethar; and "Supplementation of Opposites in Simple Predicate…

Initiated in 1965, the Standard Speech Development Program of the Pittsburgh Public Schools was designed to give junior high school students control of standard English speech through oral pattern drills based on particular phonetic or grammatical structures of standard English. By the end of the 1967-68 school year, pattern drills were part of…

The basic objectives of the ABC Project, conducted at Tolleson Elementary School during the 1968-69 school year, were to give all disadvantaged migrant children the opportunity to develop a positive self image, build basic language communication patterns, and learn about their present environment in a natural and intellectually stimulating…