Examines features of and sources for the discourse of Martin Luther King, Jr., as they relate to the language and assumptions favored by his listeners and readers in an effort to understand how speakers and writers can successfully argue from premises that audiences accept. Indicates how an understanding of King can help in composition…

Explores the effects of training children to construct persuasive arguments and to compromise in situations in which their interests conflict with other children. Found that even very limited instruction can produce some improvement in communicative performance. (PD)

Results revealed that inducing women to be more argumentative had a favorable effect on their credibility. (PD)

Outlines a copywriting course generated by a former professional that duplicates the interactions and pressures of actual on-the-job experience. (CRH)

Suggests that students can improve the quality of their persuasive essays when the issue is first argued in the classroom. Discusses invention techniques and methods for students to conduct their own research surveys for support of their theses. (HTH)

Surveyed 190 adolescents to investigate adolescent perceptions of parental persuasive communication. Argues that adolescents base their attributions of parental power on their parents' attempts to control their behavior. Results indicated that adolescents' age and gender and communicative context affect how they perceive parental persuasive…

Describes the structure and emergence of extended argument sequences produced by preschool children. Provides a system for analyzing turns that initiate, elaborate, and terminate argument sequences. Draws conclusions regarding the development of proficiency in producing argument and interaction. (PD)

Replicates and extends a previous survey (EJ 283 746) on ethics in forensic activities. Concludes that forensic educators and participants share a basic concern for ethics in speech contest events. (PD)

Applied Syntactic Language Computer Analysis and counts of legal jargon and power speech to analyze the language styles of plaintiffs, defendants, and attorneys in 20 civil trials. Concluded that successful trial participants speak differently than those who fail and that the differences in language style are significant and consistent. (PD)

Investigated how majority and minority arguments are positively or negatively responded to by group members and the effects of such responses on the polarization process. Demonstrated that reactions to minority arguments, not the forwarding of minority arguments per se, were significantly correlated with the degree of group polarization. (PD)

An important use for television is described by a professor of English at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, who emphasizes that effective speech is especially significant to the engineer. Student conversations were videotaped and played back for class evaluation. (LBH)

In this paper there is a description of a case in which mathematical argumentation emerge and develop between 7th grade students working in an interactive computerized environment without a deliberate mentoring. The computerized environment has its influence on the characteristics of this argumentation which include mathematical regularities based…

The equivalence between a statement and its contrapositive is so obvious for an expert that, usually, he does not need any explanation. In this paper, we shall examine the argumentations which students produce in order to justify a statement that, in their opinion, is equivalent to a given statement. We shall observe that the most common…

The purpose of this guide is to improve high school writing and writing instruction. Teachers are encouraged to make transparencies and handouts of the information in this guide in order to make the information accessible to students. Using the scoring rubrics and model papers, students can be taught to recognize both strong and weak areas in…

Researches in Mathematics Education about proof by contradiction revealed some difficulties of the students but also that this kind of argumentation comes spontaneously in certain situations. In this paper we shall show some processes that might lead the student to produce a proof by contradiction. In particular, we shall point out a deep link…