Connected speech is based on a set of rules used to modify pronunciations so that words connect and flow more smoothly in natural speech (hafta versus have to). Native speakers of English tend to feel that connected speech is friendlier, more natural, more sympathetic, and more personal. Is there any reason why learners of English would prefer to…

Even at an early age, children are guided by their intuitions as they write. Intuitions are the culmination of perceptions that have been internalized and synthesized into patterns. Furthermore, they take time to develop. Consequently, if systematic instruction is to play a part in the formation of intuitions about written language then it must…

Teachers are often baffled by the inability of a number of basic writing students to use the proper connective to show relationship between sentences or phrases for coherence. Most frustrating is the teacher's inadequacy in giving definitions or explanations beyond the student's textbook descriptions of the connectives. However, a cursory…

Points out that if relationships between sentences are made implicit (for the sake of simplicity or readability), comprehension may suffer and explains three teaching strategies for improving students' comprehension of implicit connectives. (RL)

Helping students understand coherence in terms of the lexical ties and semantic relations possible between clauses and sentences formalizes an area of writing instruction that has been somewhat vague before and makes the process of creating a coherent paragraph less mysterious. Many students do not have the intuitive knowledge base for absorbing…

Ways in which the study of discourse analysis can aid the teacher of basic writing in helping their students to express themselves fluently are explored in this paper. It is noted that remedial writers need to learn to relate abstract ideas to concrete examples and that they seem unable to supply the connections between ideas, especially those of…

This article introduces general concepts of carry-over and then offers a collection of activities to foster carry-over of newly trained speech skills of students with hearing losses to natural communication situations. Activities vary from high to low structure and are based on either reading, pictures, objects, or interactive communication.…

Explains how to ask questions that will help students focus on structure and better understand expository text. Notes that because students must make both internal and external connections to text structure, teachers should ask questions which prompt students to identify the relationships among ideas in a text so that meaningful learning can…

Audio-Lectal Practice (ALP) as a second language teaching methodology is described. In this program, students recite progressively difficult texts in the language laboratory, and compare their recitation with the taped recitation of a native speaker. The method facilitates exposure and rigorous work on the oral discourse features of the target…