Developed was a category system for systematic observation of the verbal and non-verbal behavior of high school biology teachers in both classroom and laboratory situations. This system was used to study the similarities and differences existing between the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) and non-BSCS teachers. Individual teachers…

This study examines, through the use of a group screening instrument, the oral language comprehension skills of elementary school children. The screening instrument was composed of 60 experimental sentences of varying syntactic complexity. Each sentence contained a specific function word or combination of function words which conveyed a direction…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of the newspaper as instructional material to promote classroom verbal interaction. Eight experimental classes (two each of tenth-grade English, sixth-grade reading and algebra, and eleventh-grade American history) used the newspaper for one week as an instructional tool to reach previously…

This article describes discursive functions in the three major areas of non-literary written communication: (1) official or personal correspondence; (2) technical reading or editing; and (3) the press. Illocutionary acts are examined under their three aspects: graphic, lexical, enunciative. This description is intended to result in training…

The paper draws attention to communication in multilingual states which may be said to exist at three levels: sub-state, state, and inter-state level. Communication at the sub-state level may involve an "in-group" language or a regional one, and hence a multilingual model is required at this level. At the state level, on the other hand,…

Pragmatics, or functional communication, refers to the transactions that occur between people, or the actual performance of language in social contexts. This paper discusses several functional communication theories, applies these theories to the education of children, and offers a number of practical techniques for teaching creative dramatics.…

Linguistics retains from its antecedents, philology and the study of sacred writings, some of their apologetic and theological bias. Thus it has not been able to face squarely the question how linguistic function may have evolved from animal communication. Chimpanzees' use of signs from American Sign Language forces re-examination of language…

This was an attempt to conduct a micro-investigation of teachers' verbal instruction. It was based on the assumption that there must be, within broad categories such as "explaining," both better and worse ways of using language to represent reality and/or to direct student behaviors. The subjects in the study were 20 experienced kindergarten…

Recent behavioral research has challenged the relationship between speech organization and the communication variables of source credibility and attitude change. Two hundred eighty-seven students comprising six discussion sections of a basic speech course were exposed to videotaped versions of three separate speech conditions: a 30% disorganized…

Symbolic interaction is the foundation for a theory of rhetoric developed in this paper. As manipulators of symbols, humans, unlike all other animals, use abstractions both to indicate (describe things present) and to represent (describe intangible things). Only human beings are capable of the elaborate systems of linguistic reference called…

This study hypothesized that low-income mothers employed as paraprofessional teachers may significantly change their verbal communication with their own school-age children. Two public schools in New York City provided the population for this study. The study was exploratory, planned as a vehicle to discover variables in the possible transfer of…

This paper suggests that language teachers reconsider their approach to listening comprehension, as recent studies seem to indicate that listening is not a passive but a highly active skill. The importance of listening comprehension as an independent skill is stressed in the first section, and principles of speech processing from which the…

Described is the development of an observation instrument that is designed to give a measure of the overall teaching strategy or style used by a teacher including both verbal and non-verbal interactions between teachers, students, and the physical materials which constitute the classroom environment. The instrument was developed to give a single…

Spectrographic analysis of two lectures given without notes by Simone de Beauvoir and Margaret Mead allow detailed specification of three forms of intonation characteristic of declarative sentences in English and French. Discussion of the objectives, of analysis procedures, and of results of the study which elaborate on intonational differences…

To study maternal behaviors as related to social class differences, 30 middle class and 30 working class white mothers were observed at home on two separate days with their 10-month-old firstborn baby girls. Predesignated behaviors which occurred during 5-second intervals were recorded by an observer. Total observation time was 4 hours for each…