Literacy education in Jamaica lacks an officially accepted policy and methodology for teaching creole speakers. This has led to a low literacy level across the population. The distinctive features of Jamaican Creole are highlighted in this article in order to give theoretical and pedagogical insights to literacy teachers. (VM)

Literary artists manipulate language. If educators could develop in their students the same sense that language is manipulable, they could help them to better appreciate literature. Emily Dickinson's poem "I Like to See It Lap the Miles" could be approached by changing it on several levels--graphics, phonics, syntax, and semantics--and…

An investigation of the relationships between form and comprehension of written materials by eleventh grade students is reported in this paper. Students were asked to manipulate two variables of spacing and punctuation in a consistently administered and marked exercise. Students also completed a comprehension test on the exercise they had just…

In spite of a number of unanswered questions regarding its place in the teaching of composition and the lack of agreement on why it is effective, sentence combining (SC) has become accepted as a useful skill building technique in regular composition classes. Attempting a broader context on the college level, SC was used exclusively to teach every…

Demonstrates that, in order to introduce students to literature, language must be examined as to the way it conveys messages. Relates the use of literary language to more normal uses. (NKA)

THE PURPOSE OF THIS ANALYSIS WAS TO DISCOVER CERTAIN ASPECTS OF STYLE (BOTH LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL) WHICH COULD BE COUNTED AND WHICH WOULD, WHEN COMPARED, DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE WRITTEN PROSE OF TWO AUTHORS. THE SUBJECT SELECTED FOR ANALYSIS WAS "THE O'RUDDY," BEGUN BY STEPHEN CRANE AND COMPLETED BY ROBERT BARR. SINCE THERE WAS NO…

The identification and study of 20 syntactical patterns responsible for much of the structural ambiguity found in literary composition can develop in students an audience awareness. When they realize that such constructions as "a dull boy's knife" and "the club will be open to members from Monday to Thursday" can be misinterpreted, they take more…

This University of Nebraska study proposed to discover (1) the types of changes occurring in syntax as children mature, (2) the age at which children begin to use certain structures in their writing, (3) the differences in syntax between children's and adult's writing, (4) the relationship between syntactic patterns and intellectual ability, and…

Novice poetry readers need to realize that there are limits to poetic license, specifically with regard to the order of words in a sentence of poetry. For example, the integrity of independent clauses is not violated--no word placed in one independent clause is meant to be read as an element of another independent clause. Although parenthetical…

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…

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 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…

A discussion of what functional linguistic research can offer teachers of composition and English is presented in this paper, which provides examples of different levels of analysis (phonology, morphology, and syntax) for the language of a variety of populations (including traditional freshmen, basic writers, English as a second language (ESL)…

MATERIALS FOR THE NEBRASKA ELEMENTARY ENGLISH CURRICULUM INCLUDE AN ANCILLARY POETRY MANUAL FOR GRADES ONE THROUGH SIX. ATTENTION IS GIVEN TO INCREASING THE CHILD'S PLEASURE IN POETRY, BROADENING HIS KNOWLEDGE OF POETRY, AND HELPING HIM TO EXPRESS HIMSELF MORE CREATIVELY. CHILDREN ARE ENCOURAGED FIRST TO ENJOY THE READING OF POEMS AND THEN TO…

When ninth-grade students are searching for help in expressing their newly discovered ideas, the principles of transformational grammar can be brought to their aid in the following ways: (1) Assign a provocative topic to the students which they are to discuss as fully as possible in one sentence. (2) Present only the kernel sentences of a…