The present study explores the use of conjunctions in simple versus complex argumentative tasks performed by second language (L2) learners as a specific measure for the amount of reasoning involved in task performance. The Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2005) states that an increase in cognitive task complexity promotes improvements in L2…

This study investigated how task complexity affected native and non-native speakers' speaking performance in terms of a measure of communicative success (functional adequacy), three types of fluency (breakdown fluency, speed fluency, and repair fluency), and lexical diversity. Participants (208 non-native and 59 native speakers of Dutch) carried…

The spoken language of Israeli children from various socioeconomic and ethnic groups was compared in terms of pragmatic strategies of communication in order to evaluate whether disadvantaged children were linguistically deficient. Interviews were conducted with a sample of 11- and 12-year-old children from privileged and disadvantaged backgrounds.…

This paper provides a brief but broad review of studies in semantics. Particular attention is given to I.A. Richards' analyses of utterances, to value statements which express moral or ethical judgments, and to recent efforts to formulate a logic of contextual implication. J.L. Austin's analysis of performative, or illocutionary, utterances and…

A structured elicitation technique, convergent communication, was investigated as a means of constraining the range of linguistic data from children in K-3 without unduly constraining the naturalness of the conversation context. The convergent communication situation is a two-person problem-solving task which ensures that all communication is…

An examination of current educational theory regarding the functions of language, exploring the relationship of language and thought, various views of linguistic poverty, and language use and instruction in the school. (EH)

The purpose of this study was to investigate differences among four oral language elicitation probes used to collect language samples from young children. Ten kindergarten, ten first-grade, and ten second-grade children provided the oral language samples. Each class was divided by sex, and five boys and five girls from each grade were randomly…

A native speaker of a language possesses both grammatical and rhetorical competence. A grammatical model, in its deep structure, represents an "is a" relationship. It seeks to offer some explanation of a human being as a human being. A rhetorical model represents a "counts as" relationship. It seeks to offer some explanation of…

This investigation studied the relationships of children's reading achievement to their ability to reproduce orally selected phonological, morphological, and syntactical structures presented in "The Gloria and David Beginning English, Series No. 20, Test 6" (GDBE). The subjects were 198 Spanish-surnamed and black third graders. Reading achievement…

This paper presents a means of evaluating answers to comprehension questions by analyzing the oral language used in the answers to the questions according to the average number of words per communication unit, a measure of linguistic and cognitive growth, in order to determine the effectiveness of comprehension questions asked at two cognitive…

To determine the variety of syntactic patterns that potential English teachers would normally use and the possible differences in their oral and written discourse, 1000-word oral and written language samples were collected from 21 student teachers. These samples were divided into T-units and classified according to 23 sentence patterns based on…

Right dislocations are expressions of the following form: (1) "They told the Grand Jury a number of lies, the Nixon men." (2) "We find we have to limit our social schedule, my husband and I." (3) "Mary always wears a frown, the ugly witch." They are found also almost exclusively in the spoken language. This paper…

The oral and written language of 10 students expressing themselves on the same subject was observed to determine (1) whether an "oral style" could be identified and (2) what relationship existed between cognitive processes and methods of expression. Six girls and four boys were placed in two situations: an "oral" situation in…

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship of selected facets of the oral language performance of pre-first grade children to readiness for beginning reading. The oral language of two groups of kindergarten children in interaction with an adult was compared. One group was black, the other Caucasian; both were from inner-city…

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…