Meaningful use of language involves intending to have an effect and intending the audience to recognize that aim. In a Freudian modification of this premise, allowing for different levels of intentional awareness, writing can be discussed in terms of how writers intend to affect readers, as well as how aware they are themselves of their intentions…

Poetry is fundamental. As a response to reality, as an inclination of language, it is basic. If English teachers want their students to become poets or readers of poets or even imaginative and provocative users of language, they have to show them that the language of poetry is theirs, and English teachers can accomplish that task only by endorsing…

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…

Urges student involvement in classroom activities, rather than formal classroom teaching, in learning English as a second language. (LG)

This article looks at question forms in everyday language usage from a functional point of view. Question forms are used more often in classrooms than in other situations. The advantages and disadvantages of exploiting question forms in the language classroom are examined. (CLK)

Describes exercises using typical expressions used in conversation, including idioms, partial or complete clauses, syntactic structures, etc. Refers to Herder Institute's (1971) five steps in language learning, of which Step Five includes 4000 lexical units to be mastered for active use, plus 3000 for passive recognition. Gives examples and…

Attitude and use in language do not always coincide. The foreign language teacher should be aware of language variation so that he can decide what forms to teach and when to introduce variants. Several generalizations about variation and acceptability in language are made. (Author/ND)

Second part of article begun in Engl Lang Teaching, v23 n2, Jan 1969.

The opportunity to discover the flaws in newspaper letters to the editor and to evaluate the ensuing consequences can help beginning persuasive writing students, who have had little practice at forming arguments, begin to conceptualize for themselves the ways that principles of persuasive discourse apply in particular writing situations. The study…

This booklet is one of a series of teacher-written curriculum publications launched by the Bay Area Writing Project, each focusing on a different aspect of the teaching of composition. Methods are illustrated for teaching students to recognize dishonest language and to write honestly themselves and include cliche/euphemism avoidance techniques,…

Intended for classroom teachers, this book suggests some approaches to assessing children's language, describes some practices, and advises teachers of some of the problems in child language assessment. Chapter one provides illustrations of assessing child language usage, including looking at a piece of writing, administering a reading test,…

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 contains five papers that are concerned with the ways in which writing changes under the influence of who it is for and what…

RATHER THAN TEACHING PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR OR LINGUISTICS, NEITHER OF WHICH IS LIKELY TO INCREASE THE ABILITY TO WRITE, SPEAK, OR LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE, THE ENGLISH TEACHER SHOULD GUIDE THE STUDENTS INTO AN INQUIRY ABOUT THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE. SUCH AN INQUIRY WOULD ACKNOWLEDGE THAT LANGUAGE USAGE IS DETERMINED BY THE SOCIAL SITUATION AND THAT…