The research resumes presented here comprise the responses received by the Stanford Child Language Project to a general request for reports on research in progress. These reports include all those distributed at the Child Language Research Forum in March 1972 and a small number received later. The resumes cover a wide range of topics and present,…

This study represents several years' work on devising tests to measure children's relative proficiency in two languages or speech varieties. A preliminary oral proficiency test in English and Spanish was administered to 45 bilingual students, of whom 41 took both versions. On the basis of difficulty and significant tendencies, 32 items were…

This English language curriculum resource handbook provides background information and techniques of instruction designed for instructors helping students to prepare themselves for the General Educational Development Tests in general language and literary abilities. It consists largely of fundamental concepts which high school graduates are…

In order to improve their students' skills in self-expression, teachers should emphasize the importance of tone, an awareness of what is being said, and an appreciation of the effect of words on an audience. They need to foster in their students an interest in and a perspective on language, its history, and the human and social attitudes which…

The complexity of the problems concerning the teaching of English to Puerto Ricans in the United States has rarely been fully appreciated. The author discusses some factors involved: (1) Learners may be admitted to school at any age and placed in advanced grades with their age peers; (2) Some older learners may be functionally illiterate in their…

Seven objective measures of language production--number of words, T-units, subordinate clauses, clauses of all types, words per clause, words per T-unit, and clauses per T-unit--were applied to 269 compositions written by seventh, ninth, and 11th graders to test assumptions about the relationships between quality of writing and students' age and…

Morphological and syntactical considerations of problems of interference which arise between the mother tongue and the target language are developed in this paper written in English and in French. Linguistically oriented, the article focuses on the identification of different linguistic elements which compose a syntagmatic form. A detailed…

This contrastive grammar based on modern linguistic theory considers noun and verb phrases as the primary morphological and syntactical structure of language. A section on the noun phrase examines: (1) types of noun phrase constructions; (2) gender and number; (3) elements, expansion, and substitutes of the noun phrase. The material on the verb…

The regularity with which much variation between forms, formerly dismissed as "free variation," can be accounted for on the basis of extra-linguistic and independent linguistic factors has made the concept of the linguistic variable an invaluable construct in the description of patterned speech variation. The linguistic variable, itself…

This document has been commissioned by the ERIC Clearinghouse for Linguistics to provide an overview of resources, methodologies and activities in the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. The author points out the contributions made by various approaches to language teaching and the new insights into language arrived at by…

The author discusses the criteria to be considered in evaluating textbooks for classes of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). They are: (1) the age and proficiency level of the students; (2) the amount of time allotted for ESOL classes; (3) the treatment of the four language skills and all subject areas; (4) gradation and presentation…

This study was undertaken to determine whether an oral-aural approach to remedial composition instruction for college students would be superior to the traditional grammar and rhetoric approach. For one semester, four classes of remedial writing at Jefferson College in Missouri served as experimental groups in which ideas and sound were stressed…

The purpose of this study was to determine if syntactic maturity, as measured by T-unit length, clause length, and clauses per T-unit, and if the level of reading comprehension, as measured by cloze tests and a standardized reading test, of one group each of selected fifth, seventh, and ninth graders could be influenced by the students completing…

In an attempt to determine the effects on creative or free writing of the i.t.a. program, as well as to determine whether any relationship exists between scores on a readiness test and achievement in this form of written composition, an empirical study was conducted in two middle income communities with 140 white first-grade youngsters. The i.t.a.…

The purpose of this pilot study was to collect information on the feasibility of designing a controlled experimental project to test the effectiveness of a new grammar called "sector analysis" on improving student writing. The fourth, seventh, and ninth grade materials used in this study were based on this new approach to teaching…